


Bound and Bothered

by ssrhpurgatory



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Flirting, Chair Bondage, Consent, Cunnilingus, Discipline, Dominatrix AU, F/M, Light Bondage, Masturbation, Older Characters, Oral Sex, Rope Bondage, Spanking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 08:44:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20597957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: Alexander Hilbert, professor of microbiology at the Goddard Institute of Technology, goes looking for a dominatrix to take care of some physical needs he’s been neglecting his entire life... and the woman he finds is unexpected in more ways than one. (Backdated to hopefully take this all out of current search; originally written in 2020.)





	1. Chapter 1

Alexander wasn't entirely certain why he was here.

Well, obviously, he knew why he was here. After all, he’d found the ad, had set up this meeting. But as to the specifics of why he'd been looking in kink spaces to begin with, reading over ads of professional dominatrixes? He wasn't really sure.

He had stumbled across the website accidentally. Well, he told himself accidentally, but truth was he'd been looking for porn. He just hadn't even been sure what sort of porn he'd been looking for; he'd known for years that most of the porn he watched just… wasn't right, somehow. Wasn’t enough. He could masturbate to it without a problem most of the time, when he felt the urge to, but afterwards he always felt as if something was strange. As if there was a need that wasn't being met somehow.

The same thing had happened the few times he had dated someone long enough to feel comfortable having sex with them. It always relieved the immediate urge, but even in the longest-lasting of his relationships, when he had spent almost a year with a man named Mace and had thought he’d enjoyed the physical aspect well enough, something had just felt off.

Alexander thought that perhaps it was a little sad for a man who was nearly fifty to not understand his own sexuality yet. He'd done enough research—both online and in a more physical sense—to realize that his attraction to other people was not confined to a single gender, though he had no idea which term he preferred between pansexual and bisexual. He had begun to suspect that he was somewhere in the spectrum of asexual when he'd read a description of a subtype that allowed for sexual urges and an interest in having sex with someone he had formed an emotional attachment to. But despite knowing labels for why he was the way he was, something was still missing.

But then he had read the ad, and a thrill of… he wasn't going to call it recognition, because it wasn't quite that. Perhaps the best way to put it was to say that he had read the ad, had noticed that the woman who had posted it was in his city, and had felt, just for a moment, as if he had slotted a piece of a puzzle into place.

“Professional Dominatrix for hire. Physical and emotional domination. Bondage, impact play, degradation. No kissing. NO SEX.” And a photo of a large and attractive black woman, grey-haired, a steely look in her eye, wearing a shiny black corset that nipped in at her waist and cut low across the chest to expose a massive expanse of bosom.

The moment had lasted long enough for him to email the woman and set up this meeting, in a busy cafe on a Saturday afternoon.

Of course, now that he was sitting there, waiting for the woman to show up, he wasn't entirely certain what he'd been thinking. Alexander glanced at his phone, then around the cafe again. He had arrived early, but now he was thinking that had been a mistake. He still had five minutes to go before their appointed meeting time, and he was already so nervous he was ready to flee.

To distract himself, Alexander glanced around the cafe, looking at the other people and making guesses at what sort of lives they lived. There were at least five people with laptops; he pegged the more hipster-looking ones as aspiring writers and the girl in pajama pants with a wild look in her eye and disheveled hair as a grad student of some sort, deep into her thesis. There were college students galore, the natural result of being in a cafe that was walking distance from one college and a short bus ride from several others, and a group of teenagers in some sort of sports uniform from one of the local high schools had staked out several booths at the back of the cafe and were all clearly having an excellent time.

Alexander let his gaze travel the crowd again and then froze. There, halfway across the cafe, at another little two-person table like his own, was one of the few people in the establishment who looked even remotely close to his own age. An attractive black woman; stylishly, albeit conservatively, dressed, her close-cut fuzz of grey hair and the reading glasses on a chain around her neck the only signs she wasn't just a few years older than the college students she was surrounded by. She was sitting there nursing a mug of something.

And she was staring directly at him.

As Alexander met her eye, she raised a sardonic eyebrow and her mug in a salute to him, then stood up from her table and crossed the room to join him.

She was shorter than he'd been expecting. Much shorter, he realized as he got to his feet to pull the other chair at the table out for her. The picture that had been included with the ad had given the impression of size—well, he thought, assessing her cautiously, it wasn't as if she didn't still outweigh him by at least 40 pounds, for all she barely came up to his chin—but despite the fact that she was immediately recognizable, she still managed to be a surprise.

She sat down and smiled up at him. “Prompt and a gentleman. Two points in your favor.”

Her voice was low and a little raspy. He had somehow expected her to squeak like a balloon, given her height, and was pleasantly surprised once again.

Alexander sat back down across from her and fiddled with his mug. “How long have you been here? I did not keep you waiting?”

“Only a few minutes before you got in. I like to arrive a little early for these appointments so I can gather some idea of what potential clients are like as they come in. In your case…” she trailed off, picking up her mug, taking a contemplative sip of the contents and looking him up and down deliberately before continuing. “Prompt, gentlemanly, attractive, and not very observant at all. I was waiting right next to the counter for my drink when you ordered your own, you know. And then it took you almost ten minutes to spot me, and I was staring right at you the entire time.”

Alexander had felt his entire face flush bright red when she'd called him attractive and hadn't quite recovered. He wasn't used to being complemented on his physical appearance. “Apologies. I find I am often…” he searched for the right words. “Often lost in own head.”

The woman nodded as if this made sense to her. “Nothing to apologize for. I was amused more than anything. And it helps me understand why you're here.”

“Does it?” Alexander asked, a little perplexed. And then he realized he had no idea what to call this woman. The ad had said Madame Rose and she had signed her emails the same way, but surely, in public… “Pardon me, but what should I call you?”

That sardonic eyebrow flew up again. “You know what to call me, boy.” Her voice had an air of command about it that went straight to his hindbrain and left him sure he would do anything this woman ordered him to do.

She took another sip of her drink, and then said, “But in public, you can just call me Rose.”

“Alexander,” he responded, reaching his right hand across the table towards her. She took it and shook it firmly.

“Alex?” she asked, holding on to his hand for a moment. Her palm was warm and smooth, and her firm grip on him was comforting somehow.

He made a face and Madame Rose laughed, a warm chuckle that made his breath stop in his chest. She released his hand and dropped her own to the tabletop.

“No, I suppose you're not much of an Alex. That name always makes me think tweenaged tomboy girls for some reason.” Her well-manicured fingers beat out a tattoo on the tabletop as she spoke.

Alexander was tempted, just for a moment, to place his hand over hers and stop those tapping fingers still, but shoved the thought down and took a sip of his coffee instead. Madame Rose took another sip from her own mug.

“What did you mean when you said that me often being lost in own head helps you understand why I am here?” he asked.

“Hm. How to put it.” She lifted her right hand off the table and cradled her mug in both hands, as if trying to warm herself on it, though her drink must have gone as lukewarm as the remains of his coffee by now. One of her nails tapped the side of the mug with a little ping! and she continued. “For some people, the services I provide… they simply like the stimulation. The pain. For others…” another little ping of a nail on the mug put emphasis on her slight pause, “It's about the immersion. About trusting me to care for them, and not push too far. About letting their rational mind, the bit that gets so caught up in anxiety, or in thoughts of their work, or whatever… it's about letting that rationality fall away and simply being in the moment, letting me control everything around them so they don’t have to worry about being in control themselves.”

She took a deep swig from her mug, apparently draining the dregs, and then set it down on the table with a clunk. “I'm going to be honest, that second type of person? That takes a lot of trust on both ends. And I'm not really sure I'm up for that sort of thing any more. It takes a lot out of you. Out of both participants.”

Alexander sighed. Well. Perhaps he would try again with one of the other ads. But she hadn't gotten up to leave yet, so maybe… “I picked you because you were only person who looked as if she might be over age of thirty five,” he said in a rush.

Madame Rose let out another of her rich chuckles at that. “You know, I was thinking about taking the ad down when it came time to renew. You're the first bite I've gotten in nearly six months who isn’t some rich college student looking to work through their mommy issues, and I'm pretty sure my age is why.” She seemed to be considering for a moment. “Think I might be the only Black woman in there too.”

“The other ads did not appeal to me. Yours did,” Alexander said simply. “I could go try with one of them, but suspect I would find myself wondering the entire time why I was letting this child dictate to me.”

Madame Rose let out a little snort of laughter at that. “God. You’re a college professor, right? I bet every time some fresh-faced new doctorate comes in for a job interview you find yourself wondering who let an undergraduate apply for a lecture position.”

Alexander frowned. “I do not!”

Madame Rose simply raised an eyebrow at him.

“Well, all right, I sometimes find myself wondering how thirty is clearly much younger now than it was when I was that age,” he muttered, picking his mug up to drain the dregs of his own coffee.

“And I’ll bet good money that when you were looking over the ads, you recognized one of them as a former student. Which has you wondering whether any of the others are former students as well.” Madame Rose’s fingertips were beating out a tattoo on the tabletop again as she spoke.

“That might have been on my mind, yes,” Alexander said. He shuddered. “It would just be… too awkward.”

Another snort of laughter from Madame Rose, and then she smiled at him. “All right. Let’s talk a little longer. I’m not promising anything, mind you.”

Alexander held out a stilling hand in her direction. “That is more than acceptable.” He glanced at her empty mug. “May I buy you another drink?”

She considered him for a moment, then nodded. “I like their cinnamon tea.”

“Then one cinnamon tea, coming right up.”

He returned to the table a few minutes later with a mug of cinnamon tea for Madame Rose and another mug of coffee for himself, setting his mug down first so that he could present hers to her with a flourish. She smiled at that, a warm, friendly smile, and it eased some of his discomfort. He had been painfully aware of her watching his every move while he ordered and waited for their drinks.

“So. Where do we, ah, start?”

“Tell me about yourself. You mentioned in your email that you’re a college professor; what do you teach?”

“Microbiology.”

Madame Rose’s eyebrows flew up her forehead in obvious surprise. “Huh. Somehow I imagined you as something more theoretical.”

Alexander shrugged. “Is theory involved. I do not simply work with microbes. Also virology, mapping infection patterns, mutations. Occasionally consult on vaccines during bad flu season, am sometimes flown in to identify particularly stubborn viral or bacterial infections.”

“Goodness.” Madame Rose picked up her mug and took a cautious sip, her immediate wince making him sure she had burnt her tongue on the tea. “I can see I won't have to wonder if you can afford my rates,” she muttered into her mug, glaring down at the tea it contained as if mentally scolding herself for taking a sip too soon and the tea for daring to be too hot for her to drink.

“And you? Do you make living from, ah, the services you were advertising?”

She gave him a cautious look, as if assessing how much it was safe to tell him of her life. Alexander tried to look trustworthy. Finally, she said, “I was in pharma research. Corporate. Made really good money at it, too. But then…” she shrugged awkwardly. “I got sick of seeing the company I worked for take something that took a dollar twenty in chemicals to manufacture then turn around and sell it for two hundred dollars a pop.” She took another cautious sip of her tea. “So these days, I get most of my income from renting the top two floors of my house out to grad students. And I do some transcribing for a few companies, and tutor chemistry from time to time. The dominatrixing is more of a… lucrative hobby, shall we say.”

Alexander didn't really know how to respond to that, so he took a cautious sip of his coffee.

“Are you married?”

He spit the sip he'd just taken back into the mug and set the mug down in a hurry as he started coughing. Coffee in the sinuses was never pleasant.

Madame Rose offered him a paper napkin, and he wiped his mouth and blew his nose before answering. “No. Would not… seek out this sort of arrangement, if I were married. Would negotiate with spouse instead.”

Madame Rose’s mouth twitched in amusement. “Ah, a monogamist. The most rare and delicate of creatures.”

“And you? Are you married?” Alexander glanced at Madame Rose’s left hand. There was no ring there, but as he asked the question, she ran her thumb across the base of her ring finger, as if feeling for a ring that was no longer there.

“I was,” she answered in a distant voice. Up until this point, her gaze had remained directly on his face, meeting his eye, but now her line of sight went unfocused, as if she were staring off into the air over his left shoulder.

“Divorce?”

She shook her head. “Afghanistan. Almost fifteen years ago now. Damn fool man threw himself on an IED. Saved his squad, got awarded a Purple Heart for it, but what good is that when you're dead?” Her eyes were glistening now, as if she was about to cry, but she blinked a few times and it went away. “And there I was hoping that as an officer and an older man, he wouldn't give in to those damn urges for over-the-top heroics that he always indulged in.”

“I am sorry,” Alexander said. “I did not mean to bring up painful memories.”

Madame Rose shook her head and smiled. “Just as much fond as painful. He was… a hell of a man.” She blinked a few more times, and then she turned her smile up a few notches, deliberately, Alexander thought, and focused it in his direction. “Now. Let's get back to the subject of you.”

For all that he thought that smile of hers was deliberate, it still had a hell of an effect on him. “What else would you like to know?”

The smile softened a bit, became more real. “What would you like to tell me? What will help me make sense of you?”

The open-ended request left Alexander baffled. “I… er. Is it all right if I continue to ask you questions in return? I know that this is not a…” if she had said dominatrix in public, surely he could say… “sexual relationship, but I…” he trailed off again, looking at her hopelessly.

“You need a certain amount of intimacy with someone before you can relax when half-naked in their presence?” Madame Rose suggested. “I understand. I might refuse to answer some of them.”

“That is fine.” Alexander cleared his throat. “I am forty eight. You?”

That dangerous eyebrow of Madame Rose’s quirked up. “Now, now, don't you know that you never ask a woman her age?”

He stared at her, aghast, and felt his cheeks flush with unwelcome embarrassment. “I—”

Madame Rose cut him off with a hand in the air and a burst of almost hysterical laughter. “Oh god! I'm sorry! I didn't think you'd—hah!—I didn't think you'd take me seriously,” she got out around the laughter. “Woo. Sorry,” she added as she finally got herself back under control. “It was a terrible joke, but I needed that laugh.”

Alexander had been staring at her incredulously the entire time, but she continued on as if not noticing his expression.

“I'm fifty-seven,” Madame Rose said.

“You are not.” Alexander exclaimed. “That must be another bad joke.”

That eyebrow went up again. “Should I show you my drivers license?”

He looks her up and down, paused on her face. Yes, she had crows feet, deep creases next to the corners of mouth when she smiled, a few lines on her forehead, and of course there was that full head of grey hair… but was she really almost a decade older than him?

She gave him a slightly pitying look. “Black don’t crack, my dear boy.”

“I have heard that before, but I think you are the first time I have seen such a clear example,” he said faintly.

“Thank you,” she said, a small smile playing at her lips. “I moisturize.”

As had happened more times already than he liked to be aware of during this conversation, Alexander had no idea of how to respond to her.

Rosemary considered the man across the table from her, consciously smoothing out the little frown that kept trying to pucker the skin between her eyebrows. She still wasn't sure why she’d agreed to this meeting; aside from a couple of long-standing regulars, she’d mostly stopped taking clients for this particular side business of hers.

But when Alexander Hilbert’s request for a meeting had landed in her inbox, she’d made the mistake of opening it instead of deleting it right away. It hadn't been much of an email; he'd simply said that he was a professor, had named the university he worked at, had stated in clear terms that he had never before made use of the services of a dominatrix, but that he wished to find out more.

She might have deleted the email even then, if he hadn't included a photo of himself. It hadn't been a good photo, she thought, now that she had actually met the man—no photo could have captured the icy blue of those eyes, the subtle changes of expression that crossed his face and revealed so much of what he was thinking.

But what the photo had revealed was a face both serious and sad… and a pair of cheekbones that looked like they could cut glass. And, well, Rosemary had always had a weakness for cheekbones like that, no matter the gender of the person bearing them.

Still, she hadn't expected to be seriously considering him as a client, and hadn't done her usual research. She thought he might object if she pulled her cell phone out now and started googling… but it wasn't like she was going to take him home with her today, was it? She had time. Time to decide if she wanted to add another client to her (now sadly diminished) roster, time to decide if she was up to the level of attention this man would need.

“You said you had questions,” she prompted him gently. Of course, so did she, but somehow they had all gone rushing out of her head the minute she’d sat down to talk to this man… and she'd found herself revealing far more than she usually did of her own past. “Or have I scared you off with my dreadful sense of humor?”

“No.” A tiny frown gathered between Alexander’s eyebrows—well, where his eyebrows would have been, if he had any hair to speak of—and he opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if searching for the right words. Finally, the frown etching its way deeper into his forehead, he blurted out, “Do you enjoy it?”

Rosemary found herself startled by the question. She wasn't sure anyone had ever asked her that. “Do I enjoy…?”

“Your part. Of the services I am here to, ah, inquire about.” A bright red blush had spread across Alexander’s cheeks as he’d uttered that euphemism.

“It depends on what you mean by enjoy. If you're asking if I get sexual gratification from it…” Rosemary suppressed an urge to smirk as the blush spread even further, to Alexander’s ears and the top of his head. “The answer would be no, not really. I think of it more as, I don't know. Therapy, maybe. I'm there to help you work through whatever it is you need my services for.” Rosemary took a sip of her tea, considering. “And I suppose… when I started doing this, I was at a really low point. My husband had just died, his entire family had decided to fight me tooth and nail on every bit of the funeral arrangements despite the fact that I was paying for them, and then they sued me over his will, and they’d barely tolerated me to begin with, you understand, in that polite Southern white person sort of way, but it still came as a bit of a shock, and things were sort of falling apart at work, and…” Rosemary realized she was babbling and blushed herself. “Well, anyway, this was one place where I felt like I had control.”

Alexander inclined his head slightly at that, not quite a nod but an expression of understanding all the same. “And now?”

Rosemary frowned, considering it. “I… I'm really not sure,” she said, forcing out a little laugh that sounded fake even to her own ears. “I guess I still like knowing there’s one place in my life where I've got complete control, even though I don't feel like everything around me is falling to pieces any more.”

Alexander let out a low, considering hum that shivered down Rosemary’s spine. Damn, but this man was attractive. Not just those cheekbones, but a deep voice that left her feeling weak and shivery about the knees… and perhaps a little bit higher up as well. Maybe if she didn't take him on as a client, he would be interested in going on a date. After all, something must have drawn him to her ad… other than her age, that was.

“How about you? What’s got you thinking that being tied up and flogged is the solution to your personal problems?”

The blush spread across Alexander’s entire face again, and he stared wide-eyed across the table at her. “I do not understand how you can be so nonchalant about saying such things in a public place,” he muttered.

Rosemary laughed, a real laugh this time. “Most of them have moved out of the area now, but it used to be that most of my local friends were kinksters. You just sort of get used to utterly shocking things being said around you in public. That wouldn't even have registered as mildly racy with that lot.”

Those nonexistent eyebrows of his climbed his forehead at that. “I see. It is clear that you have lived a more interesting life than mine by far.”

“I wouldn't say that. You said you get pulled in to consult on viral infections and the like. That sounds pretty exciting to me.” Rosemary tried to smile and felt the corners of her mouth twist into an almost-frown instead. “It matters, what you do. That sort of thing… it really makes a difference. Makes the world better.”

Alexander was frowning again. “It does not feel that way. It feels as if…” He sighed and leaned forward, rubbing a hand over the top of his bald head. “I have not always been able to help,” he said to the table top. “Always, I do my best. But sometimes… sometimes there is nothing I can do but recommend course of action to avoid further infection, recommend…”

“Palliative care?” Rosemary suggested when Alexander trailed off and did not speak again.

He looked up at her briefly and nodded. “And always, I must make sure to be professional, to be in charge, to make others feel that a solution might be possible.”

“Sounds like you spend a lot of time trying to make sure you're in control,” Rosemary said gently. “And maybe you'd like to have someone else be in charge for a while.”

The words seemed to lighten Alexander somehow; he sat up straight again, his shoulders no longer tense with whatever private anguish had been pulling him in on himself. “I suppose I would,” he said. And then he smiled, and Rosemary knew with a stony certainty that she was about to do something extremely foolish.

“I’ll take you on. Just on a trial, of course. If things get too… intense, for either of us, we call it quits.”

“That seems reasonable,” Alexander said. “When…?”

Rosemary tapped her lower lip contemplatively. “Would this afternoon be too soon?”

Alexander looked a bit taken aback, and Rosemary hoped for a moment that perhaps he'd refuse her out of hand. It had been an impulsive offer, after all.

“Not a proper session,” she said in a rush as he hesitated. Clearly that impulsive surge of foolishness wasn't done with her yet. “Free of charge. I just… want to get to know you a bit more. And we can try a few of the gentler things I have to offer, if you’d like.”

“Getting to know you in a more… private setting would be good.” Alexander swigged the remains of his second cup of coffee. “But only if you feel comfortable with it.”

“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t.”

“Where…?”

Rosemary cleared her throat, feeling self-conscious at revealing how impulsive and ill-advised her offer had really been. “My home. My supplies are there.”

Alexander eyed her cautiously. “I see. Are you not worried about inviting a strange man into your home?”

Rosemary brazened it out, raising an eyebrow in a direct challenge. “Should I be?”

Alexander shook his head. “No. I suppose not.”

“I didn’t think so.”

Of course, that didn't stop her from being just a little bit terrified.


	2. Chapter 2

Alexander had been expecting a massive house, since Madame Rose had said that she rented the upper floors out, but a three-story purple Victorian with bright teal trim was a bit of an astonishing reveal all the same. He had noticed the house a time or two in passing and had wondered what sort of person lived in it; discovering that it belonged to a professional dominatrix was more than a little confusing.

Madame Rose took him in the front door, pausing for a moment to hang a small wooden sign on it. “To let my renters know that I’m home, but not to be disturbed for anything less than an emergency,” she said.

“None of this nonsense, please,” the sign read. Alexander raised an eyebrow at it, and Madame Rose laughed. “It’s from a book,” she said.

The sitting room she lead him to was filled with old, shabby furniture, as antique as the house. “Can I get you anything? A snack, something to drink?”

Alexander fidgeted. The two cups of coffee had made their rapid way through his system during the walk to Madame Rose’s house. “Actually, a bathroom?”

She smiled. “Of course. The door to the left where we came in,” she said, gesturing back to the entryway. He made a dash for it.

As he washed his hands at the old porcelain sink, he wondered again what he was doing here. He wasn’t sure that he trusted Madame Rose enough yet to allow her to do anything drastic to him… but then again, this meeting could be a way for that trust to grow between them.

When he returned to the sitting room, a tea tray had appeared on the low table in the middle of the room, along with a selection of cookies. And, sitting on the edge of the tray, there was a pair of black, leather cuffs, attached to one another with a short chain.

“I’m going to go use the bathroom myself,” Madame Rose said. “Help yourself to anything on the tray.” And then she disappeared out of the room again.

Alexander approached the table cautiously, his eyes riveted on the cuffs. He sat down on the very edge of the couch that was next to the table and reached out to stroke the leather of the cuffs carefully. It was smoother than he’d expected; he’d been expecting the plasticky feel of fake leather, but he thought these must be the real thing. He picked them up carefully and examined them; they appeared to close by way of buckles on the sides, and the interiors were lightly padded.

He wrapped one around his wrist and snugged it tight before fumbling the buckle into place. It was difficult to do one-handed, and the compression of the cuff around his wrist made it difficult to bend the hand he was cuffing to assist in the procedure, but perhaps if he found the right angle…

Madame Rose came back into the room while he was seeing if he could get a cuff on his free hand and laughed, a gentle, kind laugh. “Let me give you a hand with that,” she said.

Alexander held his wrists out for her in a wordless appeal.

“In front of or behind you?”

His breath left him in a rush as he thought about it. He wouldn’t have considered it if he'd been trying to get them on while alone, but knowing he’d have Madame Rose’s assistance when it came time to remove them again… “Behind me,” he said, before he could lose his courage.

Madame Rose sat down next to him. “Hands behind you, then,” she said.

Alexander put his hands behind his back and felt his breath catch in his throat as she buckled the loose cuff around his free wrist.

“Not too tight?”

Alexander shook his head, then added a quiet “No,” as well. The couch, he realized now, was much closer in size to a loveseat than a proper couch, and even when Madame Rose lounged back against the opposite arm, she was still close enough that her left knee was brushing gently against his right.

“So,” she said, her voice low. “Would you like a cookie?”

His mouth had gone dry. “Water?”

Madame Rose nodded and got to her feet, leaving the room again. Alexander sat silently in her absence, painfully aware of the fact that he had hardened immediately when Madame Rose had fastened that second cuff onto his wrist. He found himself wishing that he’d asked her to cuff his hands in front of him, if only to be able to hide his reaction to being restrained in that way.

When she returned with a cup of water in hand, he looked up at her with a frown, but she carefully avoided looking him over. “Do you trust me to help you drink?”

Alexander nodded, and she held the glass to his mouth and tilted it carefully towards him. The simple intimacy of the moment was just as arousing as the addition of the cuffs had been, and it was strange, because it normally took him weeks of slow escalation before he could get an erection in the presence of someone else.

“Enough?” she asked, once he’d taken a few sips.

“Yes. Thank you.”

Madame Rose set the glass on the table and lounged back against the arm of the chair again. Alexander turned his body sideways on the couch as well, somewhat awkwardly with his hands cuffed behind him.

“So. Tell me. Do you like being restrained that way?”

Alexander let out a little bark of laughter. “You cannot tell?”

For the first time since he’d gotten the erection, Madame Rose’s eyes flicked briefly down to Alexander’s lap and then back to his face. “That’s a physical reaction. That doesn’t tell me what’s happening in your head.” She met his eyes steadily. “Do you like it?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice low and harsh. “I like it very much.”

“Can you put any words to what’s going through your head?”

Alexander shook his head. “No. But I…” He glanced down at his lap for a moment. “This is not a usual reaction for me to have in the presence of another person. At least, not after such a short time.”

“I see.” Madame Rose’s teeth nipped into her lower lip. “May I touch you?”

“Yes.”

Madame Rose reached out and stroked her fingers gently up his neck, tracing the tendon there with a light, careful touch.

“May I take these off?” She lifted her hand and tapped the arm of his glasses gently.

Alexander let out the breath he had been holding. “Yes,” he said impulsively. He wanted to watch her reaction to touching him, but some small part of him was still expecting the sort of confused disgust on her face that his lack of hair sometimes caused in others, despite the fact that it had not appeared yet. Well, if it were to appear now, at least he would not see it, he thought as Madame Rose lifted his glasses off his face. He heard the click of her setting them on the table, but his gaze was riveted on her now-blurry face.

“Let me know if you don't like the way I'm touching you, or if I touch you somewhere too intimate,” she said. And then her fingers traced up the tendon in his neck once more, feathered across his earlobe, found his face. He found himself leaning into her hand as she carefully cupped his cheek and ran her thumb over his cheekbone. Her fingers were warm against his face, as she traced the swoop of a brow ridge, ran a finger down the slope of his nose, feathered fingers over his bare scalp. He shivered under her touch, but did not protest.

And then her hand went around behind his neck, gripping him firmly by the nape the way he thought someone might scruff a misbehaving cat. He let out a low hiss of breath at the sensation. It was a little painful and extremely exciting, and his cock, which he had thought was already as hard as it could get, throbbed painfully and pressed against his trousers.

Madame Rose released him and sat back. “Good or bad?”

“Good,” Alexander said, on the verge of begging her to grab him like that again. He settled for amending his answer to “Very good.”

“What part? Just being touched while restrained? Or being manhandled?”

“Both,” Alexander confessed. “But the pain…” He shivered. “Please. Again?”

“Use my name when asking for something and I might consider it, boy.” Madame Rose’s voice went to steel as she made that demand of him, and it sent another shiver down Alexander’s spine.

“Please do that again, Madame Rose.” Alexander felt his face flush as he said those words, but he thought he might have passed beyond actually feeling his embarrassment.

Madame Rose made a small, contented noise, and then her hand was on the back of his neck again, and her fingers clenched down hard, the tips of her nails just barely biting into the skin of his neck. Alexander let out a harsh breath.

“Very good,” she murmured. “You take direction well.”

Alexander tried to take a deep breath and couldn't quite seem to get enough air into his lungs, though whether it was because of his unexpected and disconcerting arousal or because Madame Rose’s hold on him was cutting off part of his airway, he could not tell.

It left him wanting to ask her to grab him harder.

But before he could…

“Hey, Rosemary! I know the front door’s set to do not disturb, but our kitchen sink sprang a real bad leak while you were out and it’s getting worse.”

“Go wait up there, then! I'll be done in a moment,” Madame Rose called.

“Thanks, Auntie!”

“And turn off the water!” she yelled. She had released her hold on his neck the instant the other voice had called out, and as she responded, she opened the buckles on the leather cuffs restraining Alexander with two practiced little flicks. “Sorry about that,” she murmured. “Landlord duties call. I'm much better at making sure that sort of thing is checked in on before actual appointments.”

She handed him his glasses, and Alexander took them gingerly in hands that seemed to have somehow forgotten how to work properly in the time they had been restrained behind his back. “Should we set appointment now?”

Madame Rose gave him a serious look. “You're still sure you want to?”

“Yes.” He sounded more certain than he felt.

“Next week. The same time we met in the café?”

“I am free.”

“All right. I’ll see you then.” Madame Rose got to her feet and followed him to the front door, parting from his side on the short walkway out front. “Time for me to go make sure the kids haven’t flooded their apartment.”

Alexander found himself smiling. “Good luck.”

“Thank you!” And with a jaunty wave she was gone, around the side of the house and up a flight of stairs that gave outdoor access to the second floor. Alexander watched her go for a long minute, trying to work through some of his confused feelings about the woman and getting nowhere.

Ah, well. He had a week.

Perhaps by then, he would understand what he wanted from her.

“That a new client?”

Rosemary rolled her eyes. “If it is, it’s no business of yours, missie.”

Isabel hopped down from the window seat she’d been perched in and came to join Rosemary as she headed towards the kitchen. “Nah, it’s just I think I’ve seen him around campus.”

“Definitely no business of yours, then. What about this sink?”

Isabel had stuck a stockpot under the sink for lack of a bucket. Fortunately, it seemed that whatever leak the sink had sprung had stopped when Isabel had turned the water off; unfortunately, the cause wasn’t obvious. Rosemary got down on the floor and stuck her head into the cabinet under the sink to get a better look.

Oh. Just a bit of worn hose, and an old fixture that had finally reached the end of its lifespan. “I’m going to have to take a trip to the hardware store, but looks like an easy fix. You’ll be able to use it again tomorrow. It'll just take a bit for the sealant to cure.”

“Thanks, Auntie.”

“Yeah, well, all part of the service.” Rosemary sat up and gave Isabel a curious look. “You still calling me Auntie, then? Thought you’d grown out of it.”

Isabel looked awkward for a moment. “You want me to stop?”

“I'm fine with it. I was just curious.” Isabel’s mother had been a part of Al’s unit, and Isabel was one of the few things that had kept Rosemary from feeling like her husband’s death had been pointless all those years ago. After all, Isabel wouldn't have had a mother any more, if Al hadn't done what he had done. And Sofia… when she had met Sofia at Al’s funeral, Rosemary had managed to resent the woman for surviving the incident that had killed Al for just about five minutes, and then Sofia had made some crack about Al’s family and white nonsense and they'd been fast friends ever since.

“How about you come with me to the hardware store? I can show you how to do this sort of fix for yourself.” Rosemary didn't particularly want the company right now—her mind was still stuck on the strange attraction she had been feeling for the man who had just left her house—but Isabel seemed a bit out of sorts, and for all that Rosemary had never wanted to be a mother, she tended to compulsively parent the young people who ended up renting out her upper floors.

Isabel’s face lit up. “That would be nice. I was feeling kind of helpless when I came home to a kitchen floor covered in water.”

“Well, I can make sure that you're helpless no more! At least where minor plumbing repairs are concerned.” And Isabel’s presence would keep Rosemary’s mind from lingering too much on Alexander Hilbert. As it was, she rather suspected that she would be obsessing about the man for the week until she saw him again. Some of which would no doubt be good fuel for the research she definitely should have done before inviting him back to her house… but thinking too much about the man wasn't to be borne.

Isabel was chatty on the drive to the hardware store. Weirdly so, for her, and on the way back home Rosemary finally asked her about it. “Want to tell me what’s really wrong?”

Isabel went quiet, staring out the window of the car. Finally, she said, “Renée’s boyfriend came for a visit this weekend.”

“I thought she was single.”

“Yeah, well, she was in France visiting her mom’s family over the summer and she met him there, I guess. He’s some kind of YouTube personality or something.”

“I see.” Rosemary kindly didn't mention the fact that she had been telling Isabel for almost two years to ask Renée out if she liked the girl. Isabel had always protested that it would make things awkward between them as roommates if they dated and then broke up, and Rosemary’s counterargument that things would be—and were—awkward anyway had fallen on deaf ears.

“And he’s a really nice guy, which just makes it worse, you know? And he’s like three inches shorter than Renée but where lots of guys would—do—hate her for that, it’s obvious from the way he looks at her that he thinks she’s some kind of a goddess.”

“To be fair, that’s the way you look at her too,” Rosemary teased.

“Yeah.” Isabel sighed. “It just… feels like an end. Even if there wasn't really anything there to begin with.”

“Well, if you want to drown your sorrows in fancy tea and cookies, you know where to find me.”

A little grin crept back on to Isabel’s face. “Thanks, Auntie.”

By the time they’d made the fix on the sink (and informed Renée and Sam of its status as still curing), Isabel seemed to be feeling more in control, of both her life and her kitchen sink… and Rosemary felt sure she could approach the usual research she did on potential clients with a little more equanimity.

“Hey, Auntie, mind if I borrow your kitchen sink while I take you up on that offer of tea? Some of these dishes really ought to get done tonight.”

“Let’s bring them down, then.”

While Isabel buried herself elbow-deep in soapy water, Rosemary pulled out her tablet and started in on her searches. There was one advantage to having Isabel there, it turned out. “Hey, are there any private sites or forums you guys use to dish on your professors?”

“I knew he was a client!” Isabel pumped her fist in the air, and then lowered it slowly at Rosemary’s glare and raised eyebrow. “Uh. I think there’s a reddit?”

“Thank you.”

“Why do you want to know about that sort of thing, anyway?” Isabel rinsed the last of the pots she’d brought down and stuck it on top of everything else in the dish rack.

“I want to know what sort of a person he is. How he treats his students is part of that. Especially if he’s the kind of person who makes inappropriate advances on them, or other things of that sort.” Rosemary didn't think Alexander would be, given his reaction to finding a former student advertising her services as a dominatrix, but she wanted to make sure.

“What, you'll punish him harder if he’s a bad guy?” Isabel joked.

Rosemary shot another glare Isabel’s way. “I'll put an end to the interaction entirely,” she said. “What I do isn’t about punishment, darling. Or not unless the client wants it to be.”

“Yeah, but don’t you, like, whip them?”

“Flogging, usually. Or paddling. And not everyone considers pain a punishment.”

“To be honest, that’s just kind of weird.”

Rosemary laughed. “I admit, it's not for everyone. But there are some people who find it focuses them.” She caught Isabel’s eye and raised an eyebrow significantly. “And I'll thank you to keep quiet about this, especially if you run into him on campus.”

“Ugh, fine.” Isabel hung the damp dish towel she had slung over her shoulder on top of the dishes in the rack. “I'm going to put the kettle on.”

“Thanks. Take your pick of tea. I should have at least a pot’s worth of everything.” Rosemary set her tablet aside and went for the pantry. “Now, I've got some shortbread cookies somewhere around here, but if you want something really decadent, I think I've still got some of those cream puffs in the freezer…”

“Yes please!”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No disastrous college student background nonsense, yes light bondage and spanking.

Alexander spent the next week in tense anticipation of his appointment with Madame Rose. They had been exchanging emails all week long; because this was his first experience with a dominatrix, Madame Rose was doing an extremely thorough job of asking about his boundaries and setting expectations for the experience. And to some extent, he appreciated the thoroughness... but some small part of him did not care what she did to him as long as she took control.

He was looking forward to her taking control.

It had not occurred to him that he wanted someone else to be in charge of him, not until she had said it. It hadn’t occurred to him that all the time he spent projecting competence and assurance, calm and capability wore on him, left him feeling scraped down to the bone. He still did not know if this was the solution to feeling like that, but he was willing to try.

And now, it was Saturday. He could have taken a bus to get a bit closer, but Madame Rose’s house was no further from his apartment than campus was, and he made that walk every day. And he needed the walk; his nerves had gotten the better of him over the course of the morning, in a way that had left him pacing his apartment and incapable of eating proper meals. He forced down a bland protein bar for lunch and resolved to take himself out to eat something spectacular for dinner.

Walking helped, though the weather was unseasonably warm and left him damp with sweat by the time Alexander reached Madame Rose’s house. He checked his watch. Five minutes early. Would she mind? He knocked anyway, prepared to wait on her doorstep if she wasn’t ready for him.

Madame Rose opened the door a minute later, wearing a red silk robe that left very little to the imagination as it draped across a chest pushed upwards by what seemed to be extremely severe underpinnings. Alexander’s mouth went dry.

“Apologies. I am early…”

Madame Rose smiled at that, a warm, welcoming smile that left Alexander blushing. “I expected you’d be,” she said, stepping back into her foyer. “Come on in.”

Alexander hadn't expected Madame Rose to break out the corset for him, not really. She had asked him if he had liked the look of her in a corset, and he had answered truthfully that he had, but he would just as happily have let her tie him up while she was wearing the comfortable cardigan and t-shirt she had been wearing when he met her and had told her as much. But apparently, Madame Rose had felt committed to providing the full experience.

“It looks like you could use something to drink,” Madame Rose was saying as she shut the door behind him.

Alexander shut his eyes for a moment and soaked in the coolth of her foyer as he answered. “A glass of water would be appreciated.”

“It’s a nice day out there, huh?” Madame Rose didn’t wait for an answer; she tucked her arm through his and lead him down the hall to the little sitting room down the hall. “I set aside three hours for this, so there’s plenty of time for you to cool down and relax for a bit.”

“Thank you,” Alexander managed.

“Just you sit yourself down in here. I’ll be right back.”

Alexander sat in the same loveseat she had settled him in the week before, resting his forearms across his knees, clasping his hands loosely around one another. The room was just as shabby and lived-in as it had seemed to him the week before, everything round and comfortable and colorful, much like its diminutive mistress.

Madame Rose returned in a few minutes with a tray, the same tea tray from the week before, laden with glasses and two pitchers, both with condensation beading on their sides, one clearly full of water, and the other… “What is that?” Alexander asked.

Madame Rose laughed and set the tray down on the low table in front of him. “Sweet tea. The southern kind. Al got me hooked on it after we got married, and now I can’t seem to wean myself off the damn stuff.”

“May I?” he asked, reaching for the pitcher.

“Pour me a glass while you’re at it, darling.” Madame Rose settled on the couch at his side and lounged backwards, watching him from heavy-lidded eyes that would have given her a decidedly sultry appearance even without the red silk robe and the expanse of thigh the robe revealed as she crossed her legs. Her fingers lingered against his for a moment as he handed the glass over, and a shiver trailed down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold of the full glass against his palm.

He thought that the iced tea would have been undrinkable if it hadn’t been watered down with crushed ice. As it was, it hit his tongue in a burst of sugar and tannins that completely overwhelmed his senses.

But perhaps it was just this situation that was overwhelming. He glanced sideways at Madame Rose, watching her from the corner of his eye, and felt his face heat, a warm blush spreading across his cheeks. That robe really did not leave anything to the imagination. And there, that expanse of brown thigh, puckered with cellulite and covered in a tracery of pale brown stretch marks…

It was obvious that she was used to this. She was completely relaxed, as comfortable in that robe and the corset she had to be wearing beneath it as she had been in the clothing she had worn the week before. And when he accidentally met her eye, she smiled in a way that made it clear she was perfectly aware of his cautious perusal and amused by it.

Alexander blushed harder.

“No need to be embarrassed, darling,” she said, that low raspy voice of hers sending another shiver down his spine. “We both know why you’re here. Own it.”

Alexander balanced his forearms on his thighs again, his hands clasped around the cold glass as he stared down into its brown depths. “I am not used to this,” he said quietly. “I… I have spoken of things with you that I have never discussed with another person before.”

“You mentioned having had a few partners in the past. What stopped you from talking with them about this?”

Alexander let out a harsh, bitter little bark of laughter. “I do not know. Shame, perhaps?”

He had rolled his sleeves up as he had walked to her house, and now Rosemary laid a warm hand against his bare forearm. He looked up at her, startled. The expression on her face was very kind, and he almost flinched away from it, looking back to the glass he held between his thighs.

“There’s no shame in wanting to give up control. Or in wanting to have it taken from you.” Her thumb traced a circle against his skin, a soothing gesture. “There’s no shame in wanting this.”

Alexander jerked his arm abruptly away from her and set the glass down on the table. “I think I am ready to begin.” He did not think that he would be able to bear any more of this soft solicitousness from her.

Her expression was unreadable when he met her eye once more. She simply nodded and sat up straight, setting her glass on the table as well. “Then follow me.”

He got to his feet and followed her deeper into the house, to a room at the back of the first floor—a bedroom, he would have said, as a bed loomed large in the corner of the room, if it had not been for the frame of a rack taking center stage, with cuffs dangling from overhead.

Madame Rose shrugged out of her robe, revealing a shining corset that constrained her figure in an extremely appealing way. “Get undressed, boy.”

Alexander’s mouth went dry, and he began fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. Madame Rose watched as he undressed himself with shaking hands, that amused smile curving her lips, that heavy-lidded stare boring into him. He paused with his hands on the waistband of his boxers, uncomfortably aware of the erection that now tented them, as much because of his discomfort with his arousal as for the fact that it was obvious to Madame Rose. “I am not certain if I can…” His voice shook as much as his hands did.

“I’ll allow it for today,” Madame Rose said, smiling like a cat that had gotten into the cream. “Now you come over here.”

The rack was a clever little set-up, one that allowed her to strap his wrists into cuffs like the ones she had set on the tea tray for him last week and then to haul them securely up over his head until he was just barely able to stand flat-footed on the ground. He was breathing harder now, and sweating once again, the room suddenly too warm around him.

“I’m going to spank you now,” Madame Rose said, and that was the only warning he got before a paddle came down in a stinging slap across his ass.

All of the air rushed out of his lungs, and he sagged against the bonds. The paddle came down again, a hard, fast stroke, and Alexander somehow found enough air in his lungs for a moan.

She spanked him slowly at first, rhythmically, easing him into it, and Alexander felt the world around him drop out of focus. It didn’t feel good, exactly—it hurt like hell, each spank coming just long enough after the last that he almost had time to forget how it felt—but it centered him somehow. Each slap felt like a reminder that he was just flesh and blood and bone, that he was infinitely fragile and more than strong enough to bear this punishment.

Madame Rose spoke as she spanked him, her voice low and intimate, though he had no idea what she was saying to him. It was only at the end, when the spanking slowed once more until finally it stopped that he heard her words.

“You’ve been very good, darling.” Her fingers stroked down his back, and then she crowded in close behind him, one arm wrapped around his waist and one reaching past him to release the tension on the ropes that had hauled the cuffs over his head. Alexander’s knees buckled, and somehow she held his weight, letting him lean back against her, his head falling back against her shoulder.

Her cheek brushed against his as she held him one-armed, removing the cuffs easily with her free hand. “You did very well,” she said, her voice as soothing as the warmth of her body against his. The corset poked into his shoulder blades awkwardly, but it was still comforting to have her holding him close and safe.

She wrapped her other arm around his waist when he was freed from the bonds, rubbed her cheek against his some more, deliberately this time. “I have you now,” she said, her voice full of a warm certainty that reassured him she would not drop him to the floor. “You all right?”

Alexander did not think he could find his voice, so he simply nodded. He felt as weak as a kitten, and was suddenly, ashamedly aware of the fact that the front of his boxers were damp, and not with sweat.

“There’s a bathroom just off this room where you can get yourself cleaned up,” Madame Rose said against his ear, still in that warm, soothing voice. “Think you can get your feet under you enough to walk there with my help?”

Alexander nodded again.

“Come along, then.”

Rosemary left Alexander in the bathroom alone, but left the door open just a crack, just in case. She didn’t think he was the fainting type, but he had still been pretty deep in it when she’d let him down from the frame, and she was a little worried she had pushed him too far for a first session. But he had been so responsive, so intent, so far in the moment that she had pushed that little bit further without thinking about whether or not it was a good idea.

At least he had gotten his feet back under him as she had supported him over to the bathroom. He would no doubt be stiff and sore for a few days, but what she was worried more about was the expression that had been on his face when she had finally gotten a good look at it, and the distressed glances he had given the front of his boxers.

There had been something glorious about the moment when he had come. She had been whispering to him, something low and dirty, had been using her hand instead of the paddle, having switched out of a concern about whether or not his threadbare boxers would stand up to the hard-edged paddle for much longer. And then, his entire body had stiffened for a moment, a guttural groan wrenched from his throat, the tendons straining in his neck and wrists.

She had brought him down after that, had slowed her spanking until he sagged once more in the bonds, until his breath no longer came in strained gasps drawn between each stroke of her hand. And then… and then she had released him from his bonds, and he had been warm and strangely fragile in her arms, this skinny beanpole of a man. She had wanted desperately to protect him in that moment, though from what she didn’t know. Perhaps from herself.

Alexander cleared his throat, and she glanced up to find him peeking through the crack in the door at her. “Could you bring me my clothing?”

“Of course.”

He took his clothing from her silently, and shut the door once he had it in hand. Rosemary swallowed hard and went for her robe. Well, he had sprung back fast. His gaze had been clear and unclouded, his voice very firm.

She handed him an open bottle of Gatorade once he emerged from the bathroom, and held out a small tin of balm. “Here. You should hydrate. You were sweating an awful lot.”

He took the Gatorade first and drank half the bottle down in a few quick swallows. Rosemary found herself watching the bob of his Adam’s apple in fascination.

“And this?” he asked, his hand closing over the balm she was offering him.

“You’ll probably want to rub it into your ass,” she said bluntly. “Before you go to bed, if not directly when you get home. It’ll help with the soreness. I’d offer to do it myself, but…” she shrugged. _But not if you’re not comfortable enough to be naked around me yet,_ she didn’t say out loud.

Alexander acknowledged her unspoken words with a nod. He took the little tin from her and tucked it into the pocket of his pants.

“Is there anything else I can get you?”

Alexander was in the middle of drinking down the rest of the Gatorade, but he shook his head. “No. Thank you,” he said as he handed her back the empty bottle. “I… that was… thank you,” he said again.

“It’ll probably hurt to sit for a couple of days,” she cautioned him. “Less if you use that balm and do some gentle stretching. But it’ll still hurt.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

They stood there in silence for a long, awkward moment, and Rosemary found herself strangely incapable of looking at him head-on.

“I suppose I should go now,” Alexander said.

“If you want. We could go back and finish those glasses of tea.”

Alexander laughed, a soft little chortle. “Suspect they will be less iced, now.”

“Probably, yes.” Rosemary glanced shyly up at him through her eyelashes. Damn, but this man’s laughter was worth it.

“Very well.” Alexander took a step and winced.

“And I think I’d better drive you home,” Rosemary said, stepping in close to his side and offering him her arm. “Wouldn’t want you walking all that way in this state.”

“That would be… appreciated. If you are not otherwise engaged,” he said hesitantly, giving her a shy look of his own.

She dismissed his concerns with a wave. “I was planning on it anyway.”

“Thank you.”

She settled him on the armchair in her sitting room that she’d had reupholstered in memory foam a few years back, and handed him his glass of decidedly lukewarm sweet tea. “I’m just going to pop off to my bedroom and get changed into something more sensible, and then I’ll be along to refresh the ice,” she said. “You just sit there and make yourself as comfortable as you can, all right?”

He nodded and shifted in the chair before wincing again.

When Rosemary got back to the sitting room, Alexander was nowhere to be found. But neither was the tray with the pitchers, which gave her some idea of what must have happened. She went down the side hall that opened on to her kitchen and found him there, cracking ice out of the trays from her freezer and adding it to both pitchers.

“I told you to sit,” she said, raising an amused eyebrow.

“Hurts less to move,” he said, that Russian accent of his coming on thick. “Wanted something cold to drink.”

“And you’re the type to go hunting for what you want, even in a stranger’s house. No wonder you need to be tied up in order to give up control,” she said, amused.

Alexander fumbled the ice tray he was holding and dropped it to the countertop, sending small pieces of ice cube flying. “I did not mean—”

“Hush, darling, I’m teasing you.”

He was blushing again. “I should have asked.”

“You’re fine. No harm done.” Rosemary scooped a stray piece of ice up off her counter and dumped it in the sink. “Want cookies or something to go with that?”

Alexander’s stomach growled, and he gave her a slightly ashamed look. “You will not believe me if I say no now, will you.”

He had been awfully nervy when he’d arrived. She wondered if he’d eaten at all today, or if he’d been too wound up to attempt it. This sort of thing took some people like that. “When did you eat lunch? I’m not a very good cook, but I could whip up some scrambled eggs and toast for you.” She had her back to Alexander now, opening her fridge to examine the contents, and was startled when his hand settled next to hers on the door and pushed it closed. He was standing very near to her, and a little behind, so close she fancied she could feel his breath against her cheek. The sliver of his face she could make out without turning her head to look at him seemed very serious, a little frown puckering that bare brow of his.

“Could I take you out to dinner?” he asked. His face blanched a moment later, and he stepped hastily back from her, wincing again as he did. “That was too forward.”

A little bit. Didn’t mean she wasn’t considering it. “I doubt you’re up to a sit-down in a restaurant. But if you’d be interested in cheap takeout eaten at my kitchen table…” she gestured at the tall little table in the corner of the kitchen. It was tall enough—and Alexander was short enough, for a man—that he would be able to eat standing up if he really couldn’t bear to sit.

Alexander smiled, that same smile that had made Rosemary foolish enough to invite him to her house that first afternoon she’d met him, and her heart skipped a beat. “I would like that.”

Oh, this was going to be a problem.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning in the Rosemary section of this chapter for mentions of medical malpractice related to a past pregnancy.

Alexander paid for dinner.

He had found the offer of companionship impossible to refuse. It had been a long time since he had last had a meal with another person, and even if Madame Rose was a very unusual sort of person, she was interesting, too. Interesting and, he thought, interested, though what about him drew her interest he hadn’t the faintest idea. Perhaps her interest was tied to her learning enough about him to do the job he had hired her for.

And it _was _a job to her. She had been utterly professional in every email exchange leading up to this afternoon, for all that it was a companionable sort of professionalism. He thought that the skills she was selling relied heavily on her ability to read people, and that comfortable, companionable nature of hers a part of them.

She had read him better than he had realized.

The takeout they got was not cheap at all, once they had finally agreed on a restaurant and a menu. Alexander had been intent on his own plan from earlier in the day to get something spectacular for dinner in order to make up for his lack of other meals that day. He had steered Madame Rose away from the sort of establishments that were mostly frequented by college students without much cash to spare, insisting on a restaurant that she had mentioned with a hesitant allusion to both its deliciousness and its expense, and further insisting that she pick whatever she wanted. After all, he argued, he was paying for it.

When he did that arguing, a smirk appeared on Madame Rose’s face, a smirk that remained as he placed the order.

“What?” He shifted in his seat on top of the ice packs she had put in one of the kitchen chairs for him and raised an eyebrow deliberately at her, where she was sitting at the other side of her small kitchen table, glass of iced tea in hand.

“Oh, nothing. Just something fun for us to explore later in one of these sessions, maybe. If you want to continue, that is.” She traced a little circle with her fingertip on the side of her glass as she spoke, and Alexander imagined her tracing that circle on his skin.

“I do.” The words came out in a rush, along with that breath he had been holding as he had watched her finger.

She nodded, and the smirk dropped off her face as she studied him seriously. “I think I need to give you some reading to do before the next one. You dropped into subspace faster than any client I’ve ever had. I want to make sure you know how to cope with it if it happens again.”

“Subspace? Like in… ah, what is that show. Star… star something.” Alexander wracked his brain for the name of the tv show he was thinking of. Or was it a movie?

Madame Rose laughed. “I’m sure several of the Star-somethings use the word, but not the way I am. It’s sort of… I’m not really sure how to explain it. A point where the endorphins and pain overwhelm the usual functions of your body, and the bit of you that is, well, you, winds up somewhere else.” She was frowning now, clearly trying to find the right words. “It’s not really a thing I’ve ever experienced myself,” she added apologetically. “At least not from the inside.”

He thought he knew what she was talking about now, despite her struggle to describe it. “You mean what happened when you were spanking me. It seemed… hm. As if I lost time. And control over my own body.” And it had scared him, just a little, that complete lack of control, beyond what had been forced upon him by the bonds Madame Rose had put him in.

Madame Rose reached across the table to set her hand on his forearm, warm and comforting. “It wasn’t abnormal, is all I wanted to say. I should have warned you more about that aspect, but I didn’t think…” she let out an awkward little laugh. “It usually takes trust built up over a couple of sessions for that sort of thing to happen. I wasn’t expecting it.”

_Because you don’t trust me,_ he could almost hear in the look she shot him.

It was true that Alexander didn’t trust her, not yet, but he trusted himself even less. And he was right not to trust himself. He never would have expected his body to betray him the way it had. Even now, he was uncomfortably aware of his boxers drying into stiffness where he hadn’t quite been able to dab them clean of semen.

The next words out of Madame Rose’s mouth made him think that she knew exactly where his thoughts had gone. “You’re welcome to masturbate while thinking about today, just so you know,” she said, raising one eyebrow in a distinctly dangerous fashion. “But I want you to thank me afterwards. By name. Out loud.”

Alexander let out a small sound of protest as those words sent a hot flush of embarrassed arousal through his body.

“I want you to practice for me right now, boy,” she said in a voice that brooked no refusal. “Say it. ‘Thank you, Madame Rose.’”

“Thank you, Madame Rose,” he breathed. Fuck, he was half hard once again, and from the smug little smile on Madame Rose’s face, he suspected that she could tell.

But all she said was “Good boy.”

He had expected dinner to be awkward after that, but Madame Rose was clearly an expert at putting people at ease. Half an hour later, they were chattering about work over a meal of truly excellent Thai food. Alexander had given up on the ice packs and had decided to stand at the table while they ate, and Madame Rose had offered no comment when he had chosen to do so. Fortunately, the little table and chairs were so high that his face was on a level with hers regardless.

“But they can’t possibly _require_ you to teach a first year class. Not at your level,” Madame Rose was saying with a laugh. “Shouldn’t you be all research and grad classes?”

“I like to teach one of the big lecture courses on occasion. Every few years. It keeps me on my toes.” He scooped up a spoonful of yellow curry. “And it is not as if I do all of my own grading. That is what graduate students are for.”

Madame Rose laughed again, spewing crumbs from the wrapping of a spring roll across her plate. She cleared her throat with a cough. “You are a dreadful man. I hope you know that.”

“What? It _is_ what graduate students are for.”

“I may not be in academia, but I’m pretty sure that’s one of the things you’re allowed to think but not say out loud.”

“At least not to the graduate students.” Alexander smiled and reached across the table for a moment, tapping her on the back of her right hand with the pointer finger of his left. “But you are not graduate student, are you?”

“Not for a good thirty years, no.”

“You have graduate degree, then?”

She nodded, dusting a few flakes of spring roll casing off the front of her shirt as she did. “A Ph.D. in chemistry,” she said in a distracted voice. “A bit outdated, these days, though I try to keep up with the latest developments in the field at large, especially where they overlap with pharma research.”

That sent them off on a tangent into the area where their two fields intersected, a tangent that took them back to the living room with a tea tray and cookies, a tangent that lead to other tangents until the teapot was long dry and all that was left of the cookies was crumbs. Alexander glanced out the window behind the couch they had settled on and was startled to realize that it was dark outside, well past sunset, a realization that left him suddenly awkward and embarrassed in Madame Rose’s presence. He had not noticed that it had been getting dark, not beyond the fact that she had turned on a lamp at some point while they had been talking.

“Apologies. I did not intend to disrupt your entire evening,” he said.

Madame Rose smiled kindly. “Believe me, darling, if I wanted you gone I’d have turned you out on your ear hours ago. What else was I going to do with myself?”

Alexander remembered something she had mentioned, that first afternoon they had met. “You do not have local friends?”

Madame Rose shrugged. “Not any more. Or at least not any who aren’t college students, and they have better things to do with their weekend evenings than entertaining little old me.” She reached out and pressed her hand over his for a moment, where it was resting against his knee. “Thank you. I had a lovely evening, and dinner was delicious. I don’t normally feel like it’s worth it to splurge like that when it’s just me on my own.”

Alexander blushed. “No need to thank me. I… ah. This is not a date, but…”

“But you’re a bit of a stodgy, traditional sort, and you figure if someone gives you an orgasm, you ought to buy them dinner, even if we did it the opposite way around from how it normally works,” Madame Rose finished for him, obviously teasing.

Alexander was not certain what expression was on his face, but it made Madame Rose laugh. “I would not put it that way,” he said weakly, appalled by both the crude wording and by the fact that he suspected she had gotten to the core of why he had wanted to buy her dinner. Not that he would have ever consciously thought that way, but the logic of it was depressingly sound.

Madame Rose laughed again and got to her feet, offering him her hand. “Well, I think I’ve mortified you sufficiently for the evening,” she said, that laughter still barely suppressed in her voice. “Let’s haul you to your feet and take you on home, hm?”

He needed her assistance to get to his feet, and found himself appallingly stiff once he was there. Madame Rose slid in close to his side and offered him her arm.

“Sorry about that. I think I got a little overexcited,” she said quietly as he leaned into her. She took a step towards the door and he took a tottering step of his own alongside her. “It was obvious that you were far enough gone that you wouldn’t have been able to let me know if you were really hurting.”

Alexander shook his head. “I do not think I would have stopped you,” he said, his voice just as low as hers. The moment seemed to call for this quiet, this closeness between them. “I wanted what you gave me.” And he did not think he would have admitted it until now.

“You can barely walk.” He recognized the tone of her voice now; she was angry, not with him but with herself.

“And I have not yet tried this balm of yours,” Alexander said, reaching down and patting the tin in his pocket with his free hand as they shuffled along towards the front door. “I am certain it will work wonders.”

“It’ll make you a bit less sore, maybe, and help with the bruising,” Madame Rose said, but she had a smile on her face again and she had rolled her eyes at him as he had claimed the balm would work wonders. “It’s just arnica and cocoa butter, and a bit of wax to firm things up.”

“I will recover. I suspect I simply made mistake of sitting too long.”

“Well.” But Madame Rose did not elaborate on that one word, so Alexander simply shuffled along in silence at her side until the made it to her car.

She drove a VW Beetle, as small and round as its owner. Not a new car—the upholstery was worn, and it bore a few tell-tale dings and scratches—but clearly a well-loved vehicle, he thought, watching Madame Rose take a moment to pat the dashboard after she had gotten him settled in the passenger seat.

“So, where are we headed?”

Alexander had forgotten that she did not know where he lived. “Ah, up on State Street. Right near the intersection with Park.”

“Up with all those fancy apartment complexes?” Madame Rose let out a low whistle of appreciation as she pulled out of her driveway. “You are rolling in it, aren’t you.”

“Says the woman who owns a Victorian mansion,” he shot back.

“Hey now, I only live on one floor of that Victorian mansion,” she protested with a smile. “And I’ve still got another five years on the mortgage.”

“Admit it. You are every bit as fancy as I am,” he growled at her.

“And I didn’t even break out my princess gown.”

Alexander raised an eyebrow. “Do you have princess gown?”

She met his eyes briefly in the rearview mirror. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Alexander found himself laughing suddenly, and unable to stop. He didn’t notice that Madame Rose had pulled over and parked alongside the road until he heard the click of her seatbelt, and suddenly her arms were around him, soothing him as he continued to laugh, both hysterically and painfully, a sudden release of an emotional storm that had been building up all evening and had finally burst free of his control.

“It’s all right. I have you now,” she said, in that same soothing voice she had used when she had taken him down from the rack. She pressed an absentminded kiss to his temple as she held him, and one of her hands traced slow circles on his upper back, soothing him as he shook against her. By the time he stopped shaking, the laughter had turned into tears, tracing hot tracks down his cheeks, and when Madame Rose released him he fumbled into his pocket for a handkerchief to swipe them away. Madame Rose turned back to the wheel of her car as if nothing had happened and started driving again, and a few minutes later Alexander guided her quietly into the parking lot of his apartment building.

She walked him up to his door, offering her assistance without words, waiting for him to let himself in to the apartment. And then she reached out and touched him softly on the arm. “You’ll be all right alone?”

Alexander tried to find something to say in response to that, and settled for nodding.

“Because if you really can’t be alone right now, I could stay with you for a bit,” she said, her voice gentle, her expression gentler.

“I think I need some time alone,” he managed to get out.

She nodded. “Well, if you need anything, you have my number. And my email address.”

Alexander nodded, and she turned to leave. “Wait,” he called softly after her.

She paused and turned back to look at him, a little frown on her face. “What is it?”

“We did not set next meeting.”

“Ah.” She tilted her head to one side, studying him. “I think we should give you a little bit of time to recover and do that reading before we set up another session.”

“I would rather… if we could set it up now…” Alexander felt himself blush, suddenly aware of the fact that they were having this conversation in the hallway of his apartment building, where any of his neighbors could walk out and listen in on them, but he kept insisting. “I want to see you again. Soon.”

Her eyes narrowed for a moment, as if she suspected that it wasn’t just the service she was providing that he was interested in. “It was your first time having something like that done to you. I want to give you a couple of weeks to heal up properly.”

“Are there not less, ah, damaging things we could try?”

Her eyes narrowed again. “Yes, I suppose there are.”

“Then next weekend.” Alexander swallowed hard. “If you are free.”

She gave him a slight nod. “I am. You going to have that reading done by then?”

He nodded, and then muttered “You are making me feel like one of my graduate students,” in her direction.

Madame Rose’s shoulders relaxed as she let out a bark of laughter. “Graduate studies in BDSM and kink. I like the sound of that.” She nodded curtly at him. “Next weekend. Same time and place.”

“I will be there.”

“And do remember to thank me, darling,” she shot over her shoulder as she made her way back towards the exit.

Alexander’s face was burning once more.

Rosemary was in a contemplative mood as she made her way home. So much so that when she reached home, instead of turning into her driveway, she just kept driving, heading out of town and off onto one of the well-lit roads of the suburban sprawl surrounding it, driving mindlessly, letting her mind churn through the evening.

She _liked_ Alexander Hilbert. She usually liked her clients, at least a little bit, but this went well beyond that liking and into… into something that felt just a little bit dangerous, she thought. She had realized in the aftermath of their session that afternoon that, with him, it would be all too easy for her to accidentally slip past the very careful boundaries she set when taking on clients and get far too personal. Personal and handsy.

Well. Might as well admit it.

“I want to fuck him,” she said to the silence of her empty car.

“And he’s not going to know if he’s even interested in that from you for a good long while,” she responded to herself. When setting up this first session over email, she had gotten him to expand on the comment he had made during that initial meeting, about an erection being an abnormal occurrence in the presence of another person. Based on his description, both of his own nature and past relationships, she suspected he was some flavor of asexual. “And the last thing you want to do is chase him off by coming on too strong, whether he ends up fucking you or not,” she added.

Fifteen years since Al had died. A few temporary relationships here and there since, casual flings that were more about sex than about companionship, because she’d had plenty of friends, hadn’t she? But one by one, they’d drifted away, more than a few moving for new jobs, a few more returning to their home states to take care of aging parents, uncountable others probably still living around here but off in their own happy little domestic lives now, with spouses and children and white picket fences.

Well. That last group of friends she would have lost eventually, whether Al had died or not. Even with her husband and his southern charm at her side, she suspected most of that lot had considered her a rackety, unreliable sort. They were the sort of people who kept asking when the pair of them were going to have children, and no amount of Rosemary demurring and saying children weren’t in the picture had helped. They might have adopted an older child, even still, but with Al still on active deployment and her working over sixty hours a week at her corporate job, adoption had been a dicy, difficult matter.

Would it have helped, she wondered, if she had broken under the onslaught? Would they have understood if she had screamed at them, a sob in her throat, about a teenaged pregnancy gone very wrong and a doctor who had sterilized her without her consent?

She didn’t think they would have believed her. She thought they would have told her that that sort of thing didn’t happen these days. And it wasn’t as if she would have had a kid with Al, even if she’d been able to. Pregnancy had been one thing she definitely never intended to experience again, and a baby would have strained her past her breaking point.

Rosemary realized she was crying, and pulled over to park so that she could scrabble awkwardly for the tissue box in the back seat. Clearly Alexander wasn’t the only one having an unexpectedly emotional evening. She sat there in her car, on the side of a dark road in the middle of nowhere, sobbing her heart out for missed opportunities and lost friends, for a baby she’d never wanted and a husband long dead, for this damn loneliness that permeated her days.

Finally, those tears came to a snuffling halt, and Rosemary was left with a puffy face and a headache. She sighed and started her car up again, pulling her phone out of her pocket and starting up navigation. She had no idea where she was.

When she finally pulled into her driveway again, it was a few minutes before midnight… and Isabel was just coming up the front walk. Isabel paused next to the front door and waited for Rosemary to get out of her car.

“You’re out late, Auntie. Did you have a hot date?” Isabel teased.

Rosemary raised an eyebrow and forced a smirk onto her face. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Isabel’s eyes widened, and she shook her head. “No, no I wouldn’t. And I actually kind of regret asking that question now.”

“It’s none of your business, anyway.” And Rosemary was glad the light over the front door was out and the night was dark enough that Isabel wouldn’t be able to make out any details of her face. “And you? You finally moving on from that roommate of yours?”

Isabel made a face. “I was in the library. I’ve got a paper due on Monday.”

“And you’re just working on it now? _Isabel_.”

Isabel shrugged awkwardly. “I’ve got it mostly done, anyway. And Sam’s worse than I am. He’s still in there.”

“Yes, but that means he’s not here where I can scold him. You are.”

“And you always got your papers done on time when you were in school?”

Rosemary opened her mouth to say that of course she had, and then couldn’t bring herself to utter such a lie. “You know what, I think it’s past your bedtime. Shoo, kiddo.”

Isabel laughed. “That’s what I thought.” She turned and headed towards the corner of the house, waving at Rosemary over her shoulder. “Good night, Auntie!”

“Good night, Isabel,” Rosemary called after her.

Well. At least she wasn’t going to be going to bed sad, Rosemary thought as she let herself in the front door. That was one thing to be said for living with a pile of college students; they kept her from getting too set in her ways. Maybe there was something to Alexander’s interest in teaching the occasional first year lecture.

Alexander. She thought about him as she got changed for bed, pulled her phone off her bedside table once she was tucked away under her covers.

_I hope you remembered to apply that balm_, she texted him before she could think better of pestering him this late.

_The moment I shut the door,_ came his almost immediate response. _You are up late,_ he added an instant later.

_So are you._

Three dots sat in his text bubble for what felt like a very long time after that, and Rosemary found herself wondering whether he was typing up a screed or simply writing and re-writing something innocuous. Finally, all that he sent was a simple _Good night._

_Sleep well,_ she sent back, and returned the phone to her bedside table.

And maybe she would.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another session, an awkward encounter with one of Rosemary's tenants, and these two lonely old people being absolute fools over one another and not realizing it yet.

Alexander did two things before his next session with Madame Rose. First, he packed a small shoulder bag with a full set of clean clothing.

And second, he masturbated.

He hoped that the second would keep his unruly cock in order. He was old enough that one orgasm usually did him in for the rest of the day. And just in case it didn’t, just in case he made a mess of himself, one way or the other... well, that was where that first contingency plan came into play.

Alexander thought about his session with Madame Rose as he masturbated, and thanked her after he came. Had done so every time he had masturbated that week, just as she had asked him to, despite the hot flush of embarrassment it caused.

And once, he had even looked at that photo from her advertisement as he had masturbated, the one of her in that corset of hers. He could tell now that she was older than she had been when this photo had been taken, that new lines had tracked their way across her forehead and gathered at the corners of her eyes and mouth. But that stern, domineering expression on her face… well, it was not the same as seeing it from close up, but it helped set the mood all the same.

He walked to her house again, though the weather had taken a decided turn for the chilly in the past week and the sky was threatening rain. He hoped that she would offer him a ride home again, but even if she did not, well, he had memorized the fastest bus route between their two homes and he had put a collapsable umbrella in his bag.

Despite the weather, Alexander had a decided spring in his step. Some of it had to do with the fact that the last of the soreness from the paddling Madame Rose had given him had finally worn off the day before, and some was almost certainly anticipation, excitement about whatever she intended to surprise him with this week. And some of it was just that he wanted to see her again. They had texted back and forth all week long, and for once Alexander understood those students he always decried for being glued to their phones. He had needed to turn his phone to do not disturb during classes after a Monday where every buzz from it had him glancing at the screen, just to make certain it was not from her.

This time, her front door had a piece of paper taped to it, folded into a complex little square with his name written on one of the folds. Alexander stared bemusedly at the little square for a long moment before plucking it off the door. It unfolded into a note that simply told him to come in, the door was unlocked, and then to go on back to the dungeon—and yes, she had used the word dungeon, and he was fairly certain she had used it unironically—so he followed the note’s instructions.

When he entered the dungeon, he found that the rack had been pushed out of the way and a chair and some tall object covered in a dark blanket currently took center stage. There was another small, white square taped to the back of the chair, and Alexander set his bag down next to the door and crossed the room to inspect this note.

_Undress and sit down. Sit still,_ the note said. Alexander frowned down at the chair—a simple wooden affair, with an arched back and undecorated dowels forming the backrest—and turned slowly, examining the rest of the room.

There was no sign of Madame Rose.

Alexander let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. He crossed to the bed and set the note aside before he started undressing, folding his clothing as he went and setting it neatly on the corner of the bed as well. He paused when he got to his boxers, as he had the week before… and stripped them hastily off before he could get too nervous, adding them to the pile. It was easier to do it without her watching.

He sat in the chair. The wood of the seat was cold against his backside, though it warmed quickly as he sat there. He tried not to fidget, tried to wait patiently. After what felt like an eternity and was probably only a few minutes, he reached out and poked cautiously at the blanket that was covering the tall object in front of the chair. It was the wrong shape to be Madame Rose, of course, but he was more than a little curious.

As his fingers brushed against the cloth, he heard a low laugh from behind him. He started and whipped his head around to find Madame Rose leaning against the door frame, clad once more in corset and tall boots and a pair of underwear that looked like lacy nonsense.

“Where did you come from?”

She laughed again. “I knew you were unobservant, darling, but I’m starting to worry for your safety.” She straightened up and straightened out something she had been holding between her hands, something that resolved into loops of some sort of thick cord. “Unobservant and naughty. If you can’t sit still on your own, I’ll have to force you to.”

She was across the room before he could respond, whipping a loop of the cord around his middle and trapping him against the back of the chair, following it swiftly with a second. Alexander’s breath seized in his lungs as she tied him to the chair, first with those hasty loops she had thrown around his middle, followed by bindings that secured each of his legs to the front legs of the chair, his arms along the sides of the chair back. He felt as if he were about to float away already, and he gripped his hands hard around the rear legs of the chair, letting their square edges dig into his palms as he tried to center himself.

“There we go,” Madame Rose purred, draping herself across the back of the chair. “Think you can sit still now?”

Alexander tugged fruitlessly at his bonds. “Oh, probably,” he said, doing his best to keep his voice conversational and calm. He had done a deep dive into several of the blogs Madame Rose had ordered him to do readings from, and more than a few had recommended mouthing off to one’s dominatrix as the sort of thing that could greatly increase the excitement of a scenario. He was not quite certain what it meant to be mouthy, though, so instead he had settled for trying to project the appearance of being unaffected by what she was doing to him for as long as he could manage to.

“And the bonds aren’t too tight?” Her fingers traced down his arms, where she had attached him with a series of loops to the chair, pausing at each loop to stroke her fingers along the skin just above and below it.

Alexander sucked in a great lungful of air. “Perhaps you should make them tighter,” he squeaked, and then cleared his throat. “I might try to break out of them.”

Madame Rose laughed and straightened up. He missed the warm weight of her against his shoulders as much as he appreciated the view of her he got when she came around to take a look at him from the front.

“You do make quite a pretty picture, all trussed up like this,” she said, smiling down at him. “Perhaps you’d like to take a look.” She pulled the cloth off the large object, and Alexander found himself staring at his own reflection in a tall mirror.

He wanted to shy away at first, embarrassed by this view of himself, but Madame Rose was back behind him once more, reaching over his shoulder in order to lift his chin between firm fingers. “Open your eyes, boy,” she ordered, and he did without thinking.

“Look at yourself,” she whispered against his ear, and he did.

Too skinny. Ankles and knees standing out in bony protuberances, made all the more obvious by his lack of hair. Legs splayed to either side, tied to the outside of the chair legs, a cock that was showing some unfortunate signs of stirring to life between them. A concave stomach, a ribcage that he could count the bones in from here, sharp shoulders jutting out in harsh corners thanks to the way Madame Rose had pulled his arms back behind him when she had tied him to his chair.

Then there was a face both grim and gaunt, starting to sag at the jawline with age, deep lines gathered around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. Blue eyes that peered myopically through the progressive lenses that had replaced his regular prescription the past few years, skin so pale as to look sallow next to the warm brown of Madame Rose’s hand, where she still had his chin in a firm grip.

And of course, the cords she had used to tie him in place, looking very dark against his skin.

“Don’t look away,” she said, her breath hot against his ear. And then he felt her fingers between the wooden rods that formed the back of the chair, stroking gently down his spine. He jerked hard against the bonds, his mouth opening on a gasp, his head falling backwards against her shoulder.

“Don’t look away,” she said again, feathering light fingers across his shoulders, down his chest.

And then, a sharp pinch of pain, and a clothespin was attached to the skin of his chest, just below one nipple. He let out a yelp of pain.

“Keep breathing,” she said, and there was another pinch, another clothespin attached to him.

He lost count of the number of clothespins she attached to him. Each oneplaced somewhere sensitive, each one accompanied by a reminder to keep watching, to keep breathing. “What a naughty boy you are,” she whispered against his ear, sending a shiver down his spine. “Look at you. Making a mess of yourself.”

Alexander glanced down at his cock, which was standing hard against his stomach, the tip glistening, wet with pre-ejaculate. He let out a low moan that had nothing at all to do with the pain of the clothespins and everything to do with his own confusion and distress at the clear evidence of his arousal, and at the fact that he wanted her hands on him more than anything else at this moment.

What had this woman done to him?

Rosemary had remained behind Alexander while applying the clothespins, but now she came around and stood between him and the mirror, looking him up and down, admiring her work. “What is it?” she asked as he looked up at her from beneath half-closed lids and let out a little moan. She reached out and flicked against one of the clothespins. “Does this hurt?” She flicked another.

Alexander let out another low moan and shut his eyes. “Please…”

Rosemary stared down at him, knowing she was about to push up against the bounds of her role in this and not caring. It was either this or shove her panties to one side and sit down on that hard cock of his and ride them both frantic and screaming, and she was fairly certain that one would scare him off entirely.

“Please, what? Please play with you some more?” she teased, flicking against yet another clothespin. “Or is there something else you want?” She leaned over him, one hand on the back of his chair, her face very near his as she tested her balance. And then, very deliberately, she lifted one of her feet from the ground, settling it between his spread thighs, pressing the sole of her boot against the base of his cock.

Alexander let out a low, guttural noise, and used what little play he had in his bonds to thrust ineffectively against her. Rosemary smiled and flicked another clothespin, pressing down harder against his cock with her foot. “Do you want to come, boy?” she asked, leaning closer still, her lips almost pressed against his temple.

She felt his jerky nod against her neck.

“I want to hear you beg for it,” she said.

“Please,” he whimpered, his hips jerking beneath her foot as he tried to thrust against her again.

“Please what?”

“Please let me come, Madame Rose.”

Rosemary smirked. “Good boy.” She slid her foot off his cock and back to the floor, still leaning over him but far enough back that she could look him in the eye. “Which hand?”

“What…?” he asked breathlessly.

“Which hand do you masturbate with?”

His eyes opened wide, his expression still dazed and desperate. “Left.”

She nodded and untied the bonds that had kept his left wrist attached to the chair leg before pulling the ropes around his middle up enough for him to bend his elbow and get his hand into his lap. And then, while he masturbated, she used her free hand to play with the clothespins, removing them one by one, with little flicks and twists along the way.

Alexander took his cock in hand and began jerking himself off in firm and frantic strokes. His eyes were locked on her face as he did, until he threw his head back, eyes snapping shut, a deep little noise in the back of his throat heralding his orgasm.

All things considered, he was very neat about it, Rosemary thought. His cum spurted out against his stomach, and she found herself watching him in the throes of his orgasm in an almost academic fashion, storing the images up for later use. His chest was dotted with little red marks from the clothespins, and his limbs were loose and relaxed within their bonds, all the tension he had been carrying with him when he had entered her house gone.

“Thank you, Madame Rose,” he said in a low rumble from the back of his throat.

It gave her just a little bit of a thrill to hear those words in their proper context. She stroked her fingers across his bare scalp, a gentle, careful touch. “You did very well.”

He let out a low sigh and opened his eyes, glancing down at his stomach. “I have made a mess of your ropes.”

“Only one of them. No harm there.” Rosemary handed Alexander a wad of tissues to contain the worst of the mess, and he clapped them awkwardly to his chest and stomach with his left hand as she finished untying him. Once Alexander was freed from the bonds, he made his shaking and stumbling way to the bathroom to clean himself off, and she wound the ropes into neat little bundles that would make them easier to clean, segregating out the one he had gotten semen on for special care.

“I’m going to go get myself changed,” she called in the direction of the bathroom. “There’s something to drink on the bedside table, and more bruise ointment. You’ll be all right on your own for a few minutes?”

He poked his head out of the bathroom, and pointed at one of the little red marks on his upper chest. “These will bruise?”

“Some of them, probably,” she said, amused by the indignant expression on his face. “Why?”

He blushed. “I like to swim in mornings. For exercise.”

“Ah.” She tilted her head to one side. “Well, the ones that do bruise will probably heal up within a week. You could wear a shirt while swimming, I suppose. Or…”

“Or?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Or you could let everyone know by looking at you that you’ve got a very possessive domme who likes marking you up,” she purred at him.

His eyes went very wide for a moment, and that blush spread to his ears. “_Are_ you possessive?” he asked. There was a low, considering rumble to his voice, as if he liked the thought that she wanted to possess him.

She opened her mouth to say of course she wasn’t. After all, she had only known him for a couple of weeks now, and even if they had talked every day since, via either email or text, it wasn’t as if he was hers in any fashion. And he was paying her for this, an electronic transfer before each session. This was a business transaction. He could decide to bring this relationship to an end at any point, and move on to someone different, and she would have no say in the matter.

“Yes,” she growled at him.

His eyes widened again, and then he shook his head, as if clearing it. “I will be all right. Go change,” he said.

Alexander was still in her dungeon when she was done changing. Standing there fully dressed, his hands on the back of the chair, leaning into it as he studied his reflection with a frown. When she entered the room, he half turned in her direction, but did not move from where he was standing.

She crossed to his side and set her hand against his shoulder. “You all right?”

He shrugged. “I do not know. This is all… very strange to me still.”

“You did do your reading, didn’t you?”

He shot her a crooked smile. “Yes, Madame Rose.” His voice was light and teasing, and it left her feeling just a little bit unsteady. “And it helped. But I am unused to…” He blushed and looked down at the chair. “You make me feel very strange.”

“You’re just not used to firm handling.” She slid her hand up to the back of his neck and gripped it hard for just a moment, felt the breath leave his body and his knees go wobbly as she dug her nails in. She released him and patted him firmly on the shoulder. “You’ll get used to it with time.”

He made a small noise that she took as a protest. “You have made absolute nonsense of my refractory period,” he complained.

Rosemary laughed. “You’ll get used to that, too. It’s the endorphins. All those fight or flight instincts getting churned up and turned straight into horniness.” She cleared her throat. “Do you want some tea, or do you want me to take you home?”

He was hesitating, though over which part of it she couldn’t tell. And then he made a face. “As long as it is not more of that sweet tea,” he said.

Rosemary laughed. “No, I’ll give you proper tea.” She tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Come on. Let’s go see what I’ve got in my kitchen.”

Not that her kitchen was as well-stocked as it had once been. Better than it had been before Alexander had contracted her services, at least. Even if she had socked most of his first payment away in her savings account, it had given her enough wiggle room in her budget to afford to replace some of the fancy tea she had run out of and to stock up on some perennial favorites, and the knowledge that there would probably be another payment the next weekend had given her just enough security to make that purchase. Her other clients were more sporadic, these days; she had been seeing one or the other of them once a month at most, and had learned not to rely on their appointments to balance her budget.

“Take your pick,” she said, opening the tea cabinet. “Or I’ve got coffee, but it’s all instant.”

He made the same face he had made when he had asked for something other than sweet tea. “This will be fine, thank you.”

“Are you a coffee snob?” she teased.

He shot her a look out of the corner of his eye. “If preferring to drink coffee made from beans that have been ground within past century is being a coffee snob, yes. But I am not certain that instant coffee has any coffee bean in it at all.”

Rosemary let out a snort of laughter and went to fill her electric kettle. “It’s not that bad.”

“Mm,” was his only comment, but when she glanced back at him a small smile twitched up the corner of his mouth. He pulled a box out of the cabinet. “You said you like cinnamon tea?”

Not something she had expected him to remember. “I do.”

“Then this one,” he said, handing her the box.

They had just settled in the living room with a pot of cinnamon tea, the first cups just poured, when there was a knock on the front door, followed by the sound of it opening. “Rosemary?”

“Back here, Sam!” she called.

He loped his way into the living room, a pile of pizza boxes balanced on his hip. “House movie night’s still tonight, right?”

“Oh, lord, I forgot. Yes, of course we are.”

“Great.” And then Sam noticed Alexander, and he straightened up and nodded. “Dr. Hilbert.”

Alexander nodded back. “Mr. Lambert.”

Sam cleared his throat, looking everywhere but the couch. “I’ll just. Go and put these in the kitchen.”

Rosemary turned to Alexander. “Sorry about that. I usually get all the kids in the house together a couple nights a month to watch a movie. Just to sort of… make a little community out of us, I suppose. We had to reschedule the last one, but I completely forgot it was set for tonight.” And then she frowned. “You know Sam?”

“He is one of my research assistants,” Alexander said in a mild tone, raising his eyebrows. “I was not aware he lived here.”

“Well, anyway, I had better get you on home.”

“Yes.” Alexander sighed and set his teacup down. “I was looking forward to another good conversation.”

“I _am_ sorry,” she said, taking his hand in her own and squeezing it. “Next time?”

Alexander nodded, and then whipped his head around as Sam emerged from the hall that lead back to the kitchen.

Sam cleared his throat. “You could stay, sir. I don’t think any of the others would mind, not if you’re…” His eyes darted down to where Rosemary still had Alexander’s hand clutched in hers, and Rosemary found herself blushing. “Well, anyway, any friend of Rosemary’s is welcome here.”

“It _is_ my house, after all,” Rosemary interjected sarcastically, though neither Sam nor Alexander seemed to be paying the slightest amount of attention to her.

“Thank you,” Alexander said. “But I think I should go home, all the same.”

The two men exchanged curt nods, and Rosemary rolled her eyes. Well, she’d known Sam had a habit of excessive formality, but it was a little strange to see Alexander the same way, especially given how relaxed he had been when they had first ended their session. “You’ll get everyone set up, Sam? I just want to make sure Alexander doesn’t get caught in the rain.”

Sam nodded again, and Rosemary got to her feet, tugging Alexander after her, taking a moment to slip into a pair of flats by the front door.

Alexander was silent for most of the short ride to his apartment. “Do your tenants know about you being a dominatrix?” he asked when she was just pulling in to the parking lot.

“Only Isabel,” Rosemary said, pulling to a halt in front of the main door and putting her car in park. “And she’s good at keeping secrets.” She took his hand in hers and squeezed it tightly. “But you’re worried, aren’t you.”

“Not worried enough to not want to see you again,” he said with a wry little smile on his face, squeezing her hand back. “And Sam is unlikely to spread rumors.”

“Well, he probably just thinks we’re dating, darling.”

Alexander’s hand tensed against hers, and then he pulled free and undid his seatbelt, suddenly distant. “I should let you get back to your movie night.”

Rosemary felt strangely hurt by the gesture. “All right. Have a good evening.”

He nodded and opened his door, and then froze, one foot out the car door. “I left my bag in your dungeon.”

“Oh.” She remembered seeing a messenger bag sitting just inside the door when she had come in after Alexander, but she hadn’t paid much more than a moment’s attention to it. “Anything important in it?”

He stayed frozen a moment longer, and then pulled his foot back into the car and shut the door. “Yes. I should get it tonight.”

“Well, if we’re going all the way back there, you might as well stay for the movie,” Rosemary said, putting her car back into drive as he buckled his seatbelt up again. “We’re watching one of the Star-somethings.”

Alexander laughed softly at that, and when she met his eyes in her rearview mirror, he nodded. “I think I would like that.” His hand came down over hers on the gear shift, and he squeezed it lightly. “Perhaps it would be safer if they _do _think that we are dating.”

Rosemary suppressed a laugh. “Perhaps it would.”

And perhaps it would be nice to play pretend with this man, just for an evening.

Perhaps that would be very nice indeed.

And perhaps, when tomorrow morning came, she wouldn't mind so much that she was alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some... related art. [On the NSFW Art Twitter.](https://twitter.com/madsracyart/status/1245173578691207170?s=20) That was drawn before writing this chapter but which overlaps a little bit.
> 
> Yup.


	6. Chapter 6

They spent the five minute drive back to Madame Rose’s house establishing a set of ground rules for the evening. Or at least, Madame Rose spent the drive proposing rules, and Alexander could not find any reason to object to them.

Rosemary. Sam had called her Rosemary. Alexander had not expected her real name to be anything like the one she adopted as a dominatrix, but apparently it was not so different after all. Not that he would dare call her by it, not unless she gave him leave to.

“And is it all right if I cuddle up against you?” Madame Rose was asking. “Only I tend to be a… a tactile person, and I suspect they’ll find it easier to believe that we’re a couple if there’s cuddling.”

Alexander felt the corners of his mouth twitch up into a smile, impossible to resist. “That would be acceptable.”

Madame Rose shot him a questioning look in the rearview mirror. “I just don’t want to push up against a boundary you’re not comfortable with.”

What could he say to that? He thought about that afternoon, the way she had draped herself across his shoulders, the warmth of her body against his and how he had missed it when she had straightened up. “I like it when you touch me,” he said, and then winced. Oh, that sounded much worse than it had in his head.

Madame Rose only laughed. “You’ll let me know if I go too far?”

“Of course,” Alexander said. But his face was still burning with embarrassment.

“I really can take you home after you grab your bag. You don’t have to do this.”

No, but he wanted to. Not the part that involved spending an evening with a room full of rowdy college students, watching a movie he had no real interest in, of course. But the part that would involve Madame Rose spending an evening cuddled up against his side… that, he was looking forward to. Enough to lie about the contents of his bag being vital enough that he needed them tonight. “I spend too much time alone,” was all he said in response as they pulled back into her driveway. “It will do me good, I imagine.”

“All right.” And then she put her hand over his, stopping him in the middle of unbuckling his seatbelt. “They all call me Rosemary. You should too.”

“Yes, Madame Rose,” he said.

She blushed, her cheeks darkening visibly even in the dim light of early evening. “And you are a naughty man,” she murmured as she pulled her hand away.

“I will call you Rosemary,” he reassured her.

“You had better.”

“If I slip up, you will punish me?” he asked, smiling at her.

“If you slip up, I won’t,” she responded, raising a dangerous eyebrow and smirking back at him.

His eyes widened of their own accord. “We had better go inside.” Or he would want to spend the entire evening sitting in this car with her, flirting, if flirting was what this exchange was.

When they entered Madame Rose’s house once more, the living room seemed full to the bursting with young people and their chatter, though a quick headcount revealed that there were only six other people in the room. Still, Alexander almost changed his mind at that, until Madame Rose tucked her hand into his and the thought left his mind entirely.

The room went suddenly quiet, six pairs of eyes all turning to them.

“Alexander decided he’d like to stay for the movie,” Rosemary said, squeezing his hand reassuringly in hers as she spoke. “There’s enough pizza back in the kitchen for an eighth person, right?”

A young Black woman grinned. “Yeah, sure.”

“Then I’ll do some quick introductions. This is Alexander, and he works over at GIT,” she said, holding up their clasped hands, “And going around the room we’ve got Isabel—” she pointed at the Black woman “—Renée—” another young woman, dark-skinned but with a familiar slavic bone structure “—Doug—” a young man, pale enough to pass but clearly not entirely white “—Kuan and Victoire—” an Asian man and a white woman who looked younger by far than everyone else and who were cuddled together in the corner of one of the couches “—and of course you know Sam.”

Sam nodded stiffly at Alexander from across the room, and Alexander nodded back.

“We’re going to go grab our dinner, but you lot get the movie started,” she said to the room at large. “And move yourselves off the loveseat for us, would you? These old bones need padding.”

That got a laugh from the room in general, and Madame Rose chivvied Alexander back to the kitchen as the chatter started back up behind them. “Oh, bless you Sam and your organized mind,” she muttered. “I wondered what happened to the tea tray.” It was sitting on the kitchen counter at one end of a row of pizza boxes, a brightly-colored cosy covering the teapot. “I think mugs instead of teacups, if you still want tea.”

It had been chilly outside. “Please.”

“Then could you get them down? They’re in the cabinet to the left above the stove.”

Alexander did as she asked, and then joined her at the sink where she was washing her hands. She made space for him and he followed suit, scrubbing his hands clean in his usual surgical fashion. One could not be too careful when one worked in a microbiology lab, and it had become enough of a habit now that he could not bring himself to do anything less than a thorough job.

He looked up to find her watching him. “What?”

She smiled and shook her head. “Nothing. You just have very nice hands.”

He looked down at his hands and raised an eyebrow. No, they were still the bony, knobby-knuckled hands that had been at the ends of his arms this morning. “Thank you, I suppose?” He sounded dubious even to his own ear.

Madame Rose frowned. “You don’t like your own body very much, do you?”

He shrugged awkwardly. “I... I do not think about my body much, other than trying to keep it in good condition. It is simply... simply the vessel that takes me from place to place.”

“So if I told you that I find you physically attractive and have since we first met, you’d have a hard time believing me.” Her tone of voice was calm and utterly serious, and it made Alexander blush.

But why not tell her the truth? “I would have a hard time believing that, yes.”

She nodded, and then turned to the tea set, pouring out a mug for each of them. “I’ll keep that in mind. You should get yourself loaded up on dinner, if you can bear to eat pizza for it.” Her tone of voice had slipped into one that was soft and teasing, and Alexander felt a certain internal tension he had been holding release.

“Just because I did not wish to eat pizza the last time I was here does not mean I do not eat pizza,” he said drily. The selection was not very heartening, but a choice between mediocre pizza and no dinner at all would always go to the pizza. He chose the least greasy-looking of the remaining slices and hoped they wouldn’t disrupt his digestion too much.

By the time they made it back to the living room, the movie seemed to be well underway. Alexander ate his pizza and drank his tea—and mildly regretted his earlier decision of cinnamon tea, the two flavors were _not_ complimentary—and tried to make sense of the narrative unfolding on the screen. What he could make out he found irritating; it seemed to be leaning hard into that old racist myth about the pyramids being built by aliens. Or perhaps for aliens, in this case. He was not certain which.

So instead of watching the movie, which would only increase his irritation, he turned to watch Madame Rose. Right now, she was licking pizza grease off of her fingers, the sight of which lead to a familiar tightening in Alexander’s groin and an equally familiar flush of distress.

He wanted her.

He was not _ready_ to want her, was not yet accustomed to this hot flush of arousal he felt again and again in her presence. He did not even know if it was Rosemary he wanted, this woman who lived in a ridiculously colored house and drove a VW Beetle and who he could talk for hours with, or Madame Rose and her bonds and her pain who he wanted, or even if there was a distinction between them.

Sam got to his feet halfway through the movie and started gathering up empty plates, and Alexander followed suit with his and Rosemary’s dishes. It was not as if he was paying attention to the movie, and he needed a moment away from the warmth of Madame Rose at his side, a moment free from wanting her the way he did.

“Come back quickly,” she murmured to him as he got to his feet. It sounded like an order and sent a shiver down his spine.

Sam was at the sink, rinsing plates when Alexander joined him in the kitchen. The pizza boxes had been tidied away already, and Sam was neatly stacking the rinsed dishes at the side of the sink as he went.

Sam glanced up and held out his hand. “I’ll take those.”

Alexander handed the plates over, the mugs carefully stacked on top. “Thank you.” He stood there awkwardly, watching Sam work.

When Alexander didn’t leave, Sam cleared his throat and spoke again. “So you’re dating my landlord.”

Alexander couldn’t quite bring himself to lie outright. “We have been… seeing one another. For a couple of weeks.”

Sam finished rinsing the mugs and opened up Rosemary’s dishwasher. “I’m not going to be weird about it.”

But Alexander might be, if he was not careful. “That is good to hear.” He stood there silently as Sam loaded the dishwasher before asking, “She is good landlord?”

Sam closed the dishwasher up again and paused there, his hand against the counter above it. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Yeah. Rent’s cheap and problems get fixed fast, and she takes good care of us all.” Sam swallowed hard and blinked rapidly a few times, and to Alexander’s surprise he realized Sam was trying not to cry.

Alexander wasn’t used to seeing any emotion other than irritation from Sam. The boy was always organized and efficient at work, and if he had any feelings he kept them well hidden. “That is also good to hear,” Alexander said awkwardly, studying the countertop instead of Sam’s face.

“Yeah, well, just a warning that if you hurt her you’ll probably get beat up by the whole lot of us,” Sam said, laughing in the sort of awkward way that was always a replacement for crying.

Alexander let out a snort of laughter of his own. Madame Rose struck him as the sort of woman to take care of her own dirty work. “If I hurt her I suspect they will never find my body,” he said drily. “I do not think that you will have to worry about finding me and beating me up.”

Sam’s laugh at that was both startling and genuine. He doubled over to rest his elbows on the counter and drop his head into his hands as he chuckled. “I don’t think she’d _quite_ resort to murder,” he said, before letting out another laugh.

“I am not going to be weird about it either,” Alexander said.

“Thanks.” Sam straightened up again. “Back to the movie?”

“I will be along in a moment. Need to use bathroom.”

“All right. You know where it is?”

At Alexander’s nod, Sam left him alone in the kitchen. Alexander pressed his palms into the cool countertop, focusing on his breathing, trying to prepare himself to go back to that living room and knowing that there was nothing that would prepare him for it.

He laughed softly at himself. He was nervous. Nervous about a woman who might not even want him back, who might only be doing what she did because he paid her to do it, who might not even _like_ him.

No. No, she must like him, at least a little. He had a week worth of texts in his pocket, a memory of hours of conversation. She did not strike him as the sort of person who would keep a conversation going for hours with someone just because he was paying her to tie him up.

She had asked if she could cuddle him, and there had been no cuddling yet. He rather wanted to see if he would enjoy the cuddling as much as he enjoyed her tying him up.

And if he did, well, he would think about what that meant later.

Rosemary smiled up at Alexander as he came back to the living room. Poor man looked nervous as he approached, and even more so when he settled down at her side and slid an arm along the back of the couch behind her shoulders. He seemed to be shaking with those nerves of his, the couch trembling as he adjusted his position.

Well, better put him out of his misery, she thought. She scooted up close to his side and reached up behind her head, pulling his arm down across her shoulders. “Welcome back,” she murmured against his ear. “Want a summary of what you missed?”

“I do not think I would be able to make any sense of this movie either way,” he responded quietly, turning his face slightly towards her.

She laughed silently. “Not really your thing, I take it.”

“Not really,” he agreed.

She nestled her head against his shoulder and, after a moment, felt the cautious press of his cheek against her hair as he leaned back against her.

The next thing she knew, she was waking up to a living room that was silent except for Alexander’s soft snoring and what sounded like one hell of a storm happening outside. A bleary glance around the room revealed it was empty and had been tidied up from the usual chaotic aftermath of movie night, except for what looked like a note on the end table next to Alexander’s shoulder.

She shifted and reached past him for the note, trying not to wake him up. When she unfolded it and peered at it narrowly, all it said was “Sam says he’s trustworthy and you two looked so cute we couldn’t bring ourselves to wake you up,” in Isabel’s spare and crooked handwriting.

Rosemary tried to sit up properly and winced. Oh, she was getting too old to fall asleep on the couch like that, even if Alexander had been nice and warm to lean against. Alexander’s snoring came to a halt with a snort as she sat up, and he lifted his arm gingerly from her shoulders a moment later, moving carefully, clearly dealing with an old stiff body of his own.

“What time is it?” he asked in a voice muzzy with sleep.

“Not sure.”

He shifted and dug his cell phone out of his pocket. “After midnight.”

“I should get you home.” A gust of wind rattled the windows and briefly disrupted the loud patter of rain. “Unless you’d rather stay over tonight.”

He froze, not even breathing as far as she could tell, and let out his next words on a sigh. “Stay over?”

“As long as you don’t mind sleeping in the dungeon. That’s my only spare bed.”

He relaxed at that. “If you do not mind… I know my apartment is only five minutes away…”

“I wouldn’t have offered if I minded, darling,” she said, trying not to feel insulted at his obvious relief. “And I’m an okay night driver, but my vision’s not as good as it used to be, and it sounds like it’s really coming down out there.”

“Thank you.” And he reached for her, taking her hand in his and interlacing their fingers before squeezing it tight.

There was another loud gust of wind and the lights flickered.

“Let’s get you settled in case we lose power, hm?” Rosemary said, tugging her hand free from his and hauling herself to her feet.

Alexander followed her down the hall to the dungeon, murmuring half-coherent answers as she took him along to the bathroom and pointed out where to find fresh towels and a spare toothbrush, soap and washcloths… well, he didn’t really need shampoo, but she found herself opening the cabinet it was in anyway.

“I will be all right,” he said finally, putting a hand on her shoulder and stopping her nervous chatter in its tracks.

“All right.” Rosemary blushed. She really was fussing over Alexander.

Or maybe it wasn’t him she was fussing over. This had been the master bedroom, when Al had still been alive. She had turned it into her dungeon a few years after Al’s death, needing desperately to recontextualize it, to change it from a shrine to a man who was dead and a marriage that had ended back into a room she could live in.

And now she was thinking how nice it would be to climb into that bed with Alexander, to kiss and hold and fuck him there, to hear him snoring beside her in the night.

She was lonelier than she’d thought, if she was thinking about doing that. There was a reason she used this room as her dungeon. The thought of having sex with anyone other than Al in here had once repulsed her, making it easier to keep her mind on the job when she was at work.

She realized she was staring at Alexander, and more than that, that he was staring back.

“What?”

He sighed. “It is nothing important. You should go to bed.”

“Good night, then.” She slipped past him and out the door of the bathroom, but paused in the door to the dungeon to look back at him. “I’m just across the hall, if you need me.”

He nodded and called a quiet good night in her direction, and she shut the door behind her as she left.

Hell, she was horny again. She locked her bedroom door behind her and undressed as quickly as possible, opened up the little drawer in her bedside table where she kept the sex toys, pulling out the only cock that had been between her thighs for the last six years at least, along with a condom and the lube that was so often necessary for a woman her age.

Rosemary lay back in bed, letting her mind slip back to that afternoon, to the sight of Alexander, tied to a chair, his cock standing hard against his stomach, clothespins sticking out from his chest where she’d attached them to him. He had been so appealing in his mindless arousal, and so tempting. She trailed her hand down her stomach and between her legs, parting the lips of her cunt, finding her clit.

“No, that won’t do at all,” she murmured, going for the lube.

There. That felt better.

She wondered if Alexander would like to watch her masturbate, if she tied him up and forced him to. She knew some people really got off on that, though it wasn’t a service she offered. But tonight, with Alexander just in the other room, the thought of forcing him to watch her really got her going. Rosemary indulged the fantasy, imagining him tied to that chair, forced to watch her with her fingers busy between her legs, rubbing hard and fast against her clit.

Rosemary arched her back hard as an orgasm hit her unexpectedly, and scrambled for the dildo and the condom. Fuck, she wanted a cock in her now, even if only this fake one.

She was able to slide it in to the hilt without issue, her body miraculously cooperating with her on the subject of lubrication for once. She let herself imagine Alexander in that chair again, let herself imagine straddling him and riding him senseless the way she had been so tempted to that afternoon.

As Rosemary fucked herself with the dildo, a low groan escaped her, along with a second orgasm. She relaxed back against her pillow, panting and suddenly exhausted. But no, she’d regret it in the morning if she didn’t get things cleaned up now, and would regret it later that week if she didn’t go pee and wound up with a UTI.

She found her robe and opened her door a crack before leaving her bedroom, peering cautiously across the hall at the door to the dungeon. It was still closed, so she scampered her way to the bathroom near the front door. That was one thing she definitely missed about sleeping in the room that was now her dungeon—a bathroom she could get to without leaving her room. Not that there was ever usually anyone else in her space; on a regular evening, she probably wouldn’t even bother with a robe, provided the front door was locked.

Her bed felt very empty when she returned, and at some point while she had been in the bathroom her relaxation had turned to restlessness. Maybe it was the storm, still raging outside. Or maybe it was because the man she had just masturbated to thoughts of was in the bedroom just across the hall. And damn it, she shouldn’t be thinking about him that way, but she couldn’t seem to resist.

Rosemary rolled out of bed and turned a lamp on, going for her chest of drawers. Somewhere in there she had—ah-hah. The world’s most modest and frumpy pair of pajamas. She pulled them on and left her room again, standing in front of Alexander’s door, trying to decide whether or not to knock. He was probably already asleep again, if he had any sense.

The sound of the toilet flushing steeled her resolve. She waited until she heard the faucet turn off and then knocked lightly on the door.

Alexander opened it a moment later, standing there in a thin cotton t-shirt and a pair of boxers, looking down at her with a little frown on his face that was barely visible in the soft glow of the night light in the hallway. “Is something wrong?”

Yes. But she couldn’t be honest about what, so instead she shook her head. “No. I just…” She sighed. “It was really nice cuddling with you,” she said.

That frown furrowed itself deeper between his eyebrows, though she thought it was confusion more than anything else. “What?”

She might as well be straightforward. “I want to sleep with you.”

He gaped at her.

“Not like having sex sleeping with you!” she clarified, her face heating as she lied. Well, perhaps it wasn’t so much of a lie to say she didn’t want to have sex with him right now. That wasn’t what she was after. “I just… I miss having another person in my bed, is all.” She swallowed hard. “I miss cuddling and I miss hearing someone else breathing while I sleep and I didn’t realize how much until this evening and I…” Rosemary swallowed again, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat. “And I shouldn’t be asking you this. But I thought I would. In case it was something you’d be interested in.”

Alexander continued gaping down at her as she spoke, and then he let out a little laugh and opened the door further, stepping back into the room. “Are you big spoon or little spoon?” he asked.

It was Rosemary’s turn to be surprised. “At my height, almost invariably little,” she said breathlessly.

“Then come be little spoon before I decide this is bad idea.”

She followed him to the bed, leaving the door open behind her, leaving herself an escape route in case this turned out to be as spectacularly as bad an idea as they both clearly expected it to be. Alexander clambered into the bed first, sliding under the covers and holding them up for her.

“Come here,” he said. “If you still want to.”

She trembled as she slid into the bed beside him, as she nestled in close to his body, as he tucked the covers securely over them both. He wrapped an arm gingerly around her middle and tucked his face in close against the back of her neck, and she relaxed slowly against the warmth of his body.

She didn’t remember falling asleep.


	7. Chapter 7

The night before, Alexander had been tense and restless when he first tried to fall asleep on the bed in Madame Rose’s dungeon. He didn’t sleep well in unfamiliar places to begin with, and the chair and the mirror from earlier in the day were visible from the bed, though Madame Rose had taken the time to push them to one side as she had shown him around the room. But he had felt their presence anyway, kept flashing to that afternoon, to the way Madame Rose had made him look at himself, to the way she had made him watch as she covered him in clothespins, and the way he had not been able to look away from her, when she had finally given him leave to masturbate.

He would have taken a hot shower to relax himself if it had not been for the storm outside. Instead, he had taken himself off to the bathroom to masturbate, making a quick, efficient job of it as he sat on the toilet, thanking Madame Rose in a whisper as he came.

He had thought her knock at the door a figment of his imagination, as quiet as it had been compared to the creaks and groans of her house in the wind, but he had answered it anyway. It had felt like a very peculiar dream when she had said she wanted to sleep with him, and an even more peculiar dream when she had fallen asleep within moments, her body tucked securely against his.

And now Alexander was waking up with her warm body still pressed against him, with a crick in his neck and a stiff shoulder from sleeping in one position all night and a sense of well-being that permeated every inch of him.

She smelled very good. He had not allowed himself to notice it before, but now, with his face tucked against the back of her neck, he could not do anything but notice it. Lavender, cinnamon, jojoba oil, and something beneath them that melded all these incongruous scents into one and left them irresistible. He could stay like this forever.

His shoulder filed a protest against that notion.

Alexander sighed and worked his way backwards on the bed, sliding the arm that had spent its night beneath Madame Rose’s neck and pillow cautiously out from under her, trying not to wake her. He did not manage it. She shifted and sighed as he moved, and then lifted her head from the pillow to allow him to free himself. Alexander rolled onto his back and rolled his shoulders carefully before stretching them out. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Madame Rose—no, he thought, something about the plea she had come to him with last night made him think that she was all Rosemary right now—did something very similar, stretching like a cat and letting out an audible yawn as she did.

“Good morning,” she murmured in a voice rusty with sleep. “Sleep well?”

“Yes.” That word seemed inadequate. “Very much so.”

Rosemary dropped her hands to rest across the wide curve of her stomach. “So did I.”

He was all nerves with her in the bed beside him, and only one way to settle them. He stared at the ceiling as he asked the question that was weighing heavily on his mind, certain that every bit of his face was blushing bright red as he did. “So. Do you want to sleep with me the other way, too?”

Rosemary let out a soft little “Huh?” and then laughed, clearly realizing what he had meant. “Oh, darling, the only reason I haven’t dragged you to my lair and had my way with you yet is that I’m pretty sure you’re one of those folks who takes a bit to warm up to other people, if you ever do at all.”

The thought of an attraction so straightforward as hers seemed to be was baffling to him. “It does take time for me, yes.” He studied the distant and blurry dips and whorls of the ceiling. “But with you...” he sighed.

“With me?” she prompted.

“I know that I want to, some day. I do not usually know so easily.”

“Well, some of it’s got to be about trust, doesn’t it? Me tying you up, especially with your consent, that builds trust, and fast.”

And that was some of it. But the rest... “It is also... I find you very easy to talk to.” Alexander cleared his throat and turned his head to look at her. Her face was just far enough away that he could not read her expression well without his glasses.

“I had noticed that,” was all that she said.

He cleared his throat again and turned back to the ceiling. “Could I still see you as a dominatrix, if I also wanted to see you in other ways?”

“Yes. We would want to keep having conversations about boundaries within sessions as things develop, of course. If we do get to the point where you want to have sex, that is.” Her voice was very calm and her words straightforward as she spoke. “And boundaries outside of the sessions, too.”

“And would you want to? Even if it meant waiting for me to be ready?”

She chuckled warmly at that, and shifted towards him, nestling against his side and setting a hand on the center of his chest. “I think I’ll be able to occupy myself until then, yes. I’ve got a dildo and I know how to use it.”

So did he, for that matter.

He wondered if he could convince her to fuck him in that way too, when he was ready for her.

He put both of his hands over the one she had laid on the center of his chest and played absentmindedly with her fingers. “How long have you been interested in having sex with me?” he asked, out of sheer, morbid curiosity.

“Since our first conversation,” she said.

“After the first session?” he asked, turning to look at her face.

She shook her head. “In the coffee shop.”

“But... but you barely knew anything about me.” He stared at her, aghast.

“Well, I’d decided you were attractive when you sent me your picture with that first email,” she said, sounding amused. “And then we met up and it turned out you were an adorably awkward fellow I could throw over my shoulders and carry off like a viking, and you had nice voice to boot, so that pretty much decided me.”

“And that is all it took?”

She gave him a one-shouldered shrug. “Well, yes. If you’d said something truly vile, either that day or since, I probably would have changed my mind, but for me sex is pretty detached from whether or not I actually like or trust someone.”

He let his eyes flick down to his chest, to her hand held beneath his. “I see.”

“Granted, I’ve gone from hot to trot all the way up to fiery passion now that we’ve talked enough for me to figure out that I like you,” she said conversationally, freeing one of her fingers from his in order to tap him on the chest. “And I suspect once we get to the point where you trust me enough to be ready, I’ll be about to spontaneously combust.”

That admission cheered him immensely. He scooped her hand up off his chest and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “I would rather you did not combust, spontaneously or not.”

Rosemary made a little noise in the back of her throat that he found very appealing. “I really want to kiss you right now,” she said, nestling her head against his shoulder. “On the mouth, that is. I’m not going to if it’s not something you’re ready for, but I’m ready to whenever you are.”

Alexander let out a hum as he considered. And then he turned his head towards hers, so that they were nose-to-nose. She nuzzled gently against him, her breath warm against his lips. He reached across his body and cupped her cheek in his hand, holding her steady as he pressed closer still.

It was a chaste kiss, and a brief one. She waited for him, let him take the lead, let him brush his lips softly against hers. He could feel her entire body vibrating with tension against his side, but her mouth was gentle and relaxed against his.

He pressed a second kiss to her mouth, a closer, more intimate one, and still, she let him take the lead. Though from the way her cheek heated beneath his hand and the little frustrated noise she made in the back of her throat, he suspected her control was hard won.

He pulled back a bit to look at her. A blush darkened her cheeks beautifully, and she looked just a little bit dazed. After the way this woman had dazed and confused him for the past two weeks, it was something of a relief to realize that he could do the same to her.

“Spontaneous combustion imminent,” she murmured.

Alexander let out a short, sharp little laugh. “I am sorry.”

She shook her head. “Don’t be.” She lifted her head from the shoulder and dropped a little peck on the tip of his nose. “I like you. I can wait.”

Alexander could only hope that she meant it. And even if she did mean it now, she might change her mind later. She would not be the first person he had ever dated who thought they were fine with it only to later abandon him.

Rosemary’s face appeared in his peripheral vision. “You’re looking very serious all of a sudden. Something wrong?”

Alexander forced a little smile onto his face. “No. Nothing is wrong.”

There was a contemplative silence from Rosemary as she nestled her head back against his shoulder. “I’m going to guess there’s a particular someone who said they were going to wait and then didn’t?”

He started. She had certainly seen through him quickly. “Several someones.”

She let out an annoyed huff of breath, warm against his neck. “Well. I guess I’ll have to see whether I can convince you that I’m not going to be one of those someones.”

“It is my problem to work through, not yours.” He turned his head towards her again and pressed a kiss to the center of her forehead. Better to not tell her about the opposite end of the spectrum, the times he had allowed past partners to force sexual situations he was not ready for on him, just because he did not want to lose them.

She seemed to have realized where his mind had gone next on her own. “I think I ought to apologize for yesterday,” she said quietly against his neck. “I took advantage of the fact that you were absolutely desperate when I decided to step on you and see if you’d masturbate for me.”

Ah, that. The sole of her boot, pressed to his cock, her rapt gaze on his face as he had jerked off. In the moment, his distress had only enhanced his arousal, but in the light of day... “It was acceptable at the time, but, ah, I would prefer if you ask if I am willing to masturbate for you before we start the session.”

“Then I’ll do that.” Her fingertip traced a circle on his upper chest, just below one collarbone.

“We can set a session for next weekend?”

She sighed. “I can usually only manage one person a week, these days, and I’ve got one of my regulars coming in for a session Friday night.”

Oh. That sent a little spike of possessive jealousy through him, for all that he had no right to be jealous. But if she had admitted to it, so could he. “I suspect I am just as possessive a sub as you are a domme,” he said, blushing hard. “I know I do not have any right to ask you to stop doing that with other people…”

“No, you don’t,” she said, her voice dangerous for a moment where she was definitely Madame Rose. And then she let out another sigh, and Rosemary returned. “But I’ve never been in a relationship where I’m… I’m both. Both me and Madame Rose.” She sounded nervous now, and a little shy. “So I don’t really know how to navigate this.”

“We can… ah, what is phrase. Play it by ear?”

She nodded against his shoulder. “I’ll talk to my regulars. See if they mind putting sessions off until we’ve figured out how this is going to work.”

He was unreasonably touched by that offer. “Thank you. And if we cannot set up a session for next weekend, could I…” he swallowed hard, clasped his hand around hers. “Could I take you on a date?”

Rosemary almost wanted to laugh at how hesitant Alexander was. She was here in bed with him, cuddled up against his side, had kissed him, had freely admitted that she wanted to have sex with him, and he was still worried about whether or not she would want to go on a date with him. And as much as it was tempting to tease him… “Of course.”

He gave her a small smile. “My schedule is busy during the week. But Saturday?”

“Works for me. Dinner here, or…?”

“Could I take you out somewhere nice?” He was still nervous, his gaze switching rapidly from her face to the ceiling.

“Depends. Would I have to dress up?”

He looked rather like a deer caught in the headlights. “Ah. I think what you normally wear would be acceptable.”

“How about I break out a dress, just for you.” And she wanted to dress up for him. He hadn’t seen her all primped and polished to a shine, and she was rather hoping that he would like to see her that way. Not that there was any sign he was attracted to her body; whatever attraction he did seem to be feeling for her seemed more mental than physical. “And to tide you over… we could spend a little more time playing together today, if you’ve got time for it. Not a session, just trying out different ways of tying you up.”

She felt it as all of his breath seemed to leave him in a rush. “I need to prepare for classes this afternoon.”

“And this morning?”

He squeezed her hand, where it still rested underneath his, and turned his face towards hers with a little smile that just barely turned the corners of his mouth up. “I am free.”

Rosemary smiled back and brushed another kiss against the tip of his nose. “Good. Let’s get ready for the day and get some breakfast in us first, though.”

Alexander took over her kitchen while she showered and cooked them both a hot breakfast. His scrambled eggs were certainly much better than hers ever turned out; she never managed to get the seasoning right. And then, after a breakfast eaten together at her tiny kitchen table where they mostly limited their conversation to comments on the weather—“That storm last night sure was something, wasn’t it?” “Oh, yes,”—she took him back to the dungeon.

“Take your pants off, darling.”

He gave her a startled look. “Sorry?”

“This will be easier if you strip down a little,” she clarified. “And less dangerous. If your clothing gets caught on the bonds, it can cause damage.”

His hands went immediately to the buttons of his shirt.

Rosemary went to the closet and started pulling out equipment as he undressed. More ropes, though the ones Alexander had dirtied the day before were still sitting next to the wall in the other room, waiting for her to wash them. The rack was, of course, always outfitted with a few different ways to restrain a person, but some loose cuffs would come in handy as well.

She emerged to find Alexander stripped down to his boxers. He looked nervous again, and was shaking where he stood.

“Oh, goodness. Sit yourself down on the bed.”

“All right.” He wobbled over to the bed and sat gingerly on the corner. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about, darling.” Rosemary crossed to the bed and set her pile of ropes and cuffs on it before sitting down at his side. She set her hand gently against his arm. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Or we could just try one or two. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Alexander leaned into her hand, and then leaned further. She slid her hand around his back and wrapped her arm around his waist as he pressed into her side, resting his cheek against the top of her head. “I want to.”

She grabbed his wrist from behind, dragged it behind his back. His breath hitched in his throat. “How about I tie you to the bed first?”

“That sounds acceptable,” he said breathlessly.

“Lay down in the center, then.”

They didn’t talk as she fished the bonds up from where they were attached to the frame of the bed. She had to lengthen some of them—Alexander was short for a man, and the bed was queen-sized—but eventually she got him secured, spread-eagled across the mattress. “All right if I touch you?”

He nodded, and added a strained-sounding “Yes,” of confirmation.

She settled herself at his side and stroked gentle fingers along his arm. “I use these bonds for a few different things,” she said, smiling as he shivered at her touch. “Sometimes it’s just about being touched and not being able to touch in return,” she said, dipping her fingers into the hollow between tendons in his wrist. “Or if it’s pain they’re after, I’ll use clothespins the way I did yesterday,” she circled around one of the little bruises that had bloomed on his chest, “or I’ll tie them up with their face to the mattress and flog them.”

He let out a low breath. “That sounds… very appealing.”

“Which bit?”

“All of it.” His pupils were wide and dark with arousal, and his gaze was fixed on her face.

Rosemary drummed her fingers along one prominent collarbone. “There are a couple of different variations on this, too; sometimes I’ll tie someone’s legs together with rope instead, and secure that to the bottom of the bed. Want to try that?”

Alexander nodded. “Please, Madame Rose.”

He had been tense when she started, but he relaxed beneath her hands as she took him from one style of bond to another. Relaxed, and trusted her. Trusted her to tie him up safely, trusted her not to hurt him, trusted her not to touch him in any way he didn’t want. And he continued to trust her, even as she moved on to less comfortable bonds.

“It’s almost noon,” she said a few hours later as she finished attaching his second wrist to the ankle on that side, a position that left his face pressed to the mattress.

He sighed. “I should probably go home soon.”

“I know.” She leaned against his ass for a moment, cheek against her hand. “How are you liking this position? Comfortable?”

He let out a low hiss of breath that was almost a laugh. “No. But that seems to be point of this.”

“I’ll mark it down as worth further exploration, then.”

He laughed properly at that, muffled a bit by the bed. “Yes, I think so.”

She detached the clasps that held the cuffs on his wrists to those on his ankles, then gave him a hand undoing the cuffs, noting with a frown that he rubbed his wrists gingerly once they were free.

“Did we overdo it?” She reached anxiously for his hand and examined him. His wrists _were_ a little red.

“I am fine,” he reassured her.

“If you’re sure.”

His face was very close to her suddenly, and he had a smile on his lips. “I’m sure,” he said, and then pressed a swift, careful kiss to her mouth.

Rosemary blushed.

They discussed which positions Alexander had enjoyed being tied up in most as Alexander got dressed, a conversation that lasted through the short drive to his apartment. When they got to his apartment building, he directed her towards the visitor spaces and asked her to park there for a moment.

She turned to study him as he unbuckled his seatbelt. “You all right?”

He turned bright pink. “I just wanted to kiss you again before you go.”

“Oh!” Rosemary blinked in surprise. “Oh. Well. That would be just fine,” she said, leaning towards him.

Alexander turned towards her and cupped her face tenderly between his hands. He didn’t kiss her on the lips at first; no, first it was a soft brush of his lips against the tip of her nose, a second to her cheekbone, a third to the corner of her mouth. Rosemary shivered with anticipation, painfully aware of Alexander’s breath against her face, aware of how blue his eyes were, of how his cheeks were still flushed a lovely pink.

And then his lips met hers, and this time he was kissing her hard, again and again, teasing her lips apart with his own. She felt the soft little dart of his tongue, tickling just inside her upper lip, and let out a frustrated groan, still intent on letting him take the lead but finding it very, very hard to stick to that resolution at current moment.

The kisses slowed after what felt like a small eternity, and he finished with a soft, chaste peck to her lips, now sensitive and slightly swollen in the aftermath of his onslaught. He kept holding her face as he withdrew just enough to press his forehead to hers.

“Was that all right?”

Rosemary let out a shaky breath. “I think you know that was more than all right.” She reached up to take his chin between thumb and forefinger and tweaking it lightly. “And if you don’t, well, consider this your notice that you’re a damn good kisser.”

Alexander laughed breathlessly at that. “Have been thinking about doing that since you started tying me up,” he said. “It was very frustrating. You were all business.”

“You could have asked me to kiss you.”

“Will remember that next time.” He dropped another kiss on the tip of her nose and released her. “Let me know when I should make reservation for?”

“I’ll text you.”

His eyes lit up, and he snatched up her hand, pressing a kiss to the back. “Good.” And then he was opening her car door and getting out.

“Wait!”

“Hm?” He bent over, hand on the door to close it.

“We forgot your messenger bag again.”

“Ah.” His blush, which had been fading, reared its head again, turning his entire scalp bright red this time. “Well. Ah.”

“What is it?”

“It was just an excuse,” he mumbled. “It does not have anything important in it. Just a change of clothing. And a cheap umbrella.”

“Oh, _darling_. If you’d changed your mind about staying, you could have just said so.”

“I know,” he said with a smile. “Next time I know to tell you.”

“You’d better,” she tossed back. “Now shoo. Go prepare for your classes. I’ll see you next weekend.”

“That might be too long,” came his mournful response.

It would be for her, too. “Then we’ll find a time or two this week for me to bring you coffee in your office or something. But until then, shoo! Off to work with you.”

Alexander laughed once more and shut the car door, waving back over his shoulder at her as he made his way towards his apartment building. Rosemary watched him until he was out of sight, bubbling over with joy and well-being.

She rather thought she could learn to love this Alexander Hilbert, in whatever form he chose to love her back.

And until then, she would wait.


	8. Chapter 8

Alexander did not sleep well that night.

He did not sleep well the next few nights, either. Not that he slept well as a general rule, but he found that he felt it more than he usually did.

He was lonely, he thought. Lonely enough to try and strike up a casual conversation with Sam one day early in the week when they were both in the lab, an attempt that only got a dubious look and a mildly sarcastic “You said you weren’t going to be weird, sir,” from the boy.

It was a relief when Rosemary showed up at his office hours on Wednesday afternoon, a cup of coffee for him and a cup of tea for herself, with the clear intention of hanging around for as long as he did not have students coming in for help. Given that he had not had a single student come to his office hours yet this semester, he did not expect things to be any different today.

“How has your week been so far?” Rosemary asked once the small talk of saying hello had been swiftly dispatched.

He had offered her one of the spare chairs in front of his desk, but instead she had come around the desk and was leaning against his side of it, her hands cradled around her to-go cup. She was close enough to touch, and Alexander found himself hard-pressed not to do so. Instead, he picked up the coffee she had brought him and leaned back in his chair. “The same as every week.”

Rosemary laughed. “Well, that means nothing to me.” She reached out and set her hand against his shoulder for a moment. “Tell me about it. It’s all new and interesting to me.”

Alexander let out a startled little huff of breath. “I… I do not know what to say about it,” he said after a moment of awkward silence, where she watched him with an encouraging look on her face. “I have not ever… I have mostly dated people who do not understand what I do well enough to be interested in it.”

A flicker of something crossed her face. He hoped it was not pity. “Let’s start with something a bit simpler, then. How’d you sleep last night?”

Alexander made a face. “Horribly. I always get distracted. If it is not reading a paper, it is email, or I start working on my own research, or…” He sighed.

Rosemary rolled her eyes. “Oh, tell me about it. The internet is the universe’s _worst_ invention. And now it’s on my phone!”

Alexander let out a snort of laughter and lowered his cup from his mouth before he could take the sip he had been trying for. “Ah, but I met you there.”

She blushed, her eyes turned bashfully towards the lid of her cup of tea, a little smile turning up the corners of her mouth. “I suppose it’s good for some things.”

That blush gave him courage, in a strange way. “Could I... could I come sleep with you tonight?”

The blush darkened further. “That would be… nice,” she said, a little tremor in her voice as she spoke. “You’ve already got a spare set of clothing over there, so you won’t even have to do the walk of shame in the morning.”

“Walk of shame?”

“Going home in the same clothing you were wearing the night before, making it incredibly obvious to everyone that you got laid the night before.” She tapped her index finger against the side of her paper to-go cup and smirked at him. “Not that you’ll be getting laid, though I think we could arrange a little light bondage if you’re up for it.”

His face flushed and he felt incapable of drawing in a breath. Oh, it was inappropriate to be aroused here, but that did not seem to be enough to stop him from becoming so. “I had my first year lecture this morning,” he said, intent on changing the subject to something a little safer. “And a seminar earlier this afternoon.”

“Seminar on what?”

“Advanced Microbial Genetics.”

Her eyes lit up. “What are you on this week?”

“We are still on transcription.”

Rosemary grinned and launched into a series of questions—“Now I don’t know much about the subject, but it’s my understanding that—” and Alexander found himself answering in detail, a give and take that left him feeling a warm glow in his chest. It should not have surprised him that she could ask intelligent questions about the subject, given the natural overlap between what he did and pharmacological research, but she had been a chemist, not a microbiologist, so he was surprised all the same.

And he was even more surprised when their back-and-forth seemed to draw attention from outside. His office opened off of the department lounge, and he had registered a familiar face or two outside, but none of them had approached during the fifteen minutes of his office hours before Rosemary had joined him, so he had assumed that none of them needed his help with anything. But a hesitant knock at the door revealed one of the young women who was in his seminar.

“Oh, looks like you’ve got a customer. I’ll just get out of your hair,” Rosemary said, standing up from where she had been leaning against his desk.

“Um,” the girl—he thought her name was Rhea—said, looking at Rosemary with big eyes. “It’s just, I was kind of listening in, because I got a little bit confused during today’s lecture? Only I didn’t know what sort of questions to ask, and you seem to be a lot better at asking questions…”

Rosemary laughed and leaned against his desk again, sideways this time, so she could take in Rhea as well. “Professional question-asker, that’s me. All right then, let’s do this.”

Rosemary continued with the line of questioning she had been on before Rhea had interrupted, her eyes darting across the desk a time or two to look sidelong at Rhea, who had pulled out a notebook to scribble away in. After five minutes or so, Rosemary managed to prompt a question from the girl, with what Alexander thought had been a deliberate mis-wording of her own question, followed by a “But I’m not sure I’ve got the right vocabulary for what I’m trying to ask,” directed in Rhea’s direction. Another ten minutes later, and Rhea was leading the interaction, Rosemary listening in with an amused look on her face as she sipped her tea.

At the end of his office hours, Rhea had a solid six pages of notes and was thanking him profusely for his time, and Rosemary had been sitting silently on the windowsill behind his chair for long enough that he had almost forgotten she was there. He swiveled his chair around to face her and took a sip of his coffee, which had long since gone cold. “I should have you at all of my office hours,” he said, raising his cup in salute to her.

“She seemed to find you _dreadfully_ intimidating,” Rosemary said, hiding her smile behind her own cup, no doubt long empty. “You must be a real curmudgeon in lectures.”

“I try not to be,” he said, dismayed.

“I don’t think you can help it. It’s that Russian accent.” Her voice was a low purr, and seemed to imply that she enjoyed that accent very much herself. Alexander found himself blushing.

“I cannot help that either,” he mumbled into his cup before taking another sip of cold coffee.

“And I’m glad of it.” Rosemary pushed up off the windowsill. “You have another class tonight, or do you want to come home with me right now?”

Alexander almost spit out the second sip of coffee he had just taken. He swallowed hastily and turned his chair, scrabbling for a tissue to mop off the corners of his mouth as he spoke. “I would have to do some work this evening…”

“I’ve got wi-fi and some transcribing work I could do while you’re busy,” she said. “And I’ve probably got enough leftover tuna casserole for two if I heat up some frozen veggies to go with it.”

Tuna casserole did not sound particularly appetizing, but the thought of spending the rest of his day in Rosemary’s company? That, he liked. And, from the look on her face when he turned to glance back at her, he thought she liked the idea of spending the evening with him, too. “Let me get everything packed up.”

She beamed at him. “I’ll take care of your cup while you do?”

He nodded and she plucked the half-full cup off his desktop, leaving him behind to shut his laptop down and grab a few piles of paper off his desk, shoving the lot into his backpack. She joined him again as he was locking his office door behind himself and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow when he was done.

“Shall we?”

Alexander found himself smiling down at her and unable to stop. “I think I have everything thing I need.”

Her eyes darted to his face and away again, and she blushed. “Then let’s go.”

They dawdled their way to a bus stop—Rosemary had not wanted to try and find a parking space near campus and the afternoon was nice, if chilly—and sat side-by-side on the bus, both of them finding it too much of an effort to talk over the ambient noise of public transportation. But when he set his hand over hers, where it was resting against her knee, she turned her hand over and interlaced her fingers with his, and a moment later the warm weight of her head settled against his shoulder.

“Dinner first?” she asked when they got back to her house and she finally had to tug her hand out of his in order to dig her keys out of her purse.

Alexander was more hungry for her touch than he was for any more literal sustenance, but he knew that if he started touching her now, he might never get around to doing the work he wanted to get done that evening. “Please.” And with luck, the tuna casserole would dampen the sudden, strange ardor for her touch that had seized him. It certainly sounded like the sort of thing that would.

“All right.” Rosemary shrugged out of her jacket and hung it on a hook near the front door, toed out of her shoes, then headed back towards the kitchen, leaving Alexander to do the same. He paused there in her front hall for a moment, trying to find his breath, to bring order to his thoughts.

When he finally joined her in the kitchen, the microwave was busy with a steamer pack of frozen vegetables and Rosemary was shoveling glops of a vaguely beige substance that appeared to consist mostly of egg noodles and unidentifiable particulate matter out of a casserole dish and onto a pair of plates. “Sorry I’m not much of a cook,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at him. “Baking I’m fine at, but…”

“But that is just chemistry?” he suggested.

She smiled at him. “Pretty much. But when it comes to cooking I’m a ‘dump a bunch of cans in a pan and hope for the best’ sort of gal.”

“I will have to fix that,” he said, hanging his backpack from one of her kitchen chairs.

“Or you could just come over and cook me dinner,” she shot back. “I’m a middle-aged bitch, and you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks.”

Alexander choked on an unexpected laugh. “I would be happy to,” he managed to get out in a strained voice.

The microwave beeped, and she handed the bag of now-steaming peas off to him, pointing to where he could find a bowl to put them in and then to the part of her counter that contained the salt and pepper. “And some butter out of the fridge,” she added, shoving the first plate into the microwave.

“How has your week been?” he asked as he cubed butter and dumped it over the peas.

Rosemary sighed. “Long, for all it’s only Wednesday. And a bit lonely. Talking with you is the first proper conversation I’ve had all week.”

“Ah.” He frowned. “I had impression that your tenants treated you like, well...”

“Mom?” The microwave beeped, and she turned to swap out plates.

“A friend,” he clarified.

“I try to be one, but I let them come to me when they want to talk, given the power differential.” She rubbed her hands across her upper arms, as if she felt a sudden chill. “And it’s my understanding that midterms are coming up, so they’ve got a few more things on their mind than making sure their landlady doesn’t feel lonely.”

His resolution to not touch her yet be damned. He crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her from behind, pressing his cheek to the back of her head, ignoring the beep of the microwave as it finished.

Her breath hitched in her chest, and she relaxed her arms, settling her hands over top of his where they were clasped across her stomach. “I’m fine,” she said in a small, watery voice. “I’m used to spending most of my days alone.” She let out a wet chuckle, and lifted one of her hands to her face, he suspected to wipe away tears. “Though the folks at the grocery checkout have probably gotten a little tired of me talking their ears off while I’m in line.”

Alexander did not know how to answer, so he just pressed a kiss to her hair and kept holding her.

“We should eat,” she said after a moment.

“I know.” He sighed and released her. “No bondage tonight. I will just hold you, yes? And we will talk.”

“That would be nice.” Her voice was still rusty, and she grabbed the dish towel from the bar of her oven and swiped hastily at her face before opening the microwave and grabbing the other plate. “Let’s eat.”

The tuna casserole was warm and reasonably edible, though there was not much else that could be said about it. The peas helped.

“Have you heard from your client?” he asked, looking for a way to distract himself from the meal.

She sighed and set her fork against the side of her plate. “I’m still seeing them Friday, but that was my last appointment for the next little while, and I’m not making any new ones.”

Alexander reached across the table and rested his hand over hers. “And you are certain you are all right with this?” She gave him a confused look, so he clarified. “With breaking things off with your other clients.”

Rosemary looked at him straight-on. “I’ll be honest, it makes me a bit uncomfortable, this early on in a new relationship. But I want to see where this goes.” She blushed and ducked her head to one side. “And I know it’s probably just because I’m lonely, but… I like you. A lot.” She turned her hand under his and squeezed his fingers awkwardly.

“I like you too. Very much.” He squeezed her hand back and swallowed hard. “I find… I am not a good conversationalist,” he clarified, before moving on to his main point. “But that does not seem to matter to you. I find myself… at ease with you.”

She laughed at that. “I’ve always been good at setting people at ease. Makes me good at what I do.”

“Good at being a dominatrix or at being a landlord?” he asked, morbidly curious.

“Both of those, and it doesn’t hurt when it comes to the tutoring, either.” She let out another laugh and picked her fork back up. “Let’s finish up with this and see if we can’t get some work done, hm?”

Alexander nodded and complied.

After dinner, Rosemary pulled out a laptop and a set of headphones and settled down on the opposite side of her tall little kitchen table, her fingers flying away at a speed well beyond that which he was capable of himself. Alexander tried to concentrate on the research paper drafts he needed to give feedback on—and he mostly managed it—but his attention kept drifting to her face, to the little furrow of concentration between her eyebrows, to the way she occasionally mouthed words as she typed them out.

“What?” She glanced up and caught his eye, pulling the headphones off one ear as she did.

Alexander blushed, his eyes darting down to the stack of papers in front of him. But she seemed to like honesty, so why not be honest? “You are very attractive.”

“Am I?”

He looked back up at her to find a surprised expression on her face. “You know that you are.”

Her gaze darted back down to her own work, a warm blush spreading across her cheeks. “All right, so I know my own worth. Doesn’t mean it’s not nice to hear someone else say it, though.”

“I like your wrinkles,” he said. “The corners of your eyes crinkle up when you smile.” And a smile was making them crinkle up now, and digging deep lines at the corners of her mouth, and making a little dimple in her cheek that he wanted to press his lips to.

“Aging’s hard for women,” she said, still looking down at her keyboard, the smile falling off her face. “Men get dignity with their gray hairs. Women just get old.”

“Ah, is that why I do not have any dignity.”

Rosemary snorted with laughter and looked back up at him. “You’re dignified. You’ve got the bone structure for it, even if you don’t have the grey hair.”

Alexander set his red pen down on the paper he had been working on. “Does your work need to be finished tonight?”

She shook her head. “Yours?”

“Not tonight.”

She let out a low sigh of breath. “Sure you don’t want me to tie you up for a bit?”

“I want to kiss you.” He got to his feet and came around to her side of the table. Rosemary waited for him, tilting her head back, her lips parting on a sigh beneath his as he pressed a careful kiss to her mouth. He cupped her cheek in his hand, dipped his thumb into her dimple as it reappeared, her mouth curving into a smile against his own.

She broke the kiss on a giggle. “Sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I feel like a teenager again when you kiss me like that.” She was still smiling, so Alexander lowered his head and pressed a kiss to her dimple, too.

“Let us go to bed,” he whispered against her ear.

Rosemary released a low sigh of breath, and when he pulled back to look at her, her eyes had darkened and her lips were parted, and oh, oh how he wished he was ready to give her everything of him.

Her tongue darted out and moistened her upper lip, and then her mouth closed with a click of teeth and she shut her eyes and let out a dark little chortle of a laugh. “I think it’ll be safer if I spend some time tying you up. And then give myself a little bit of alone time with a vibrator.”

“Show me.”

Her eyes opened again. “Me masturbating?” she asked. He nodded, not sure he could bring himself to answer in words, and Rosemary’s entire face flushed dark red. She buried her face in her hands. “Fuck. Yes. Okay.” She lifted her head again and peered over her fingers at him. “I imagined doing it in front of you after our last session, you know.”

“Did you?” His breath kept catching in his throat and his gaze was riveted on her face.

“And it was really good,” she said, her voice very low and raspy and still muffled by her hands. “You sure it won’t bother you?”

Alexander put his hands to her wrists and tugged lightly, prompting her to lower her hands from her face, so that he could see all of her. “I will tell you if it does. And I trust you to bring a halt to it if I ask you to.”

Rosemary used his grip on her wrists to push him back a little and slid off her chair. “Go to the dungeon and get stripped down. I’ll get what I need from my bedroom.”

She joined him a few minutes later with a dildo in hand—not a terribly realistic one, thank goodness, as that might have been a bit much for him—along with a condom and lube. Alexander froze with his hands on the buttons of his trousers.

“Is the dildo too much?”

“For me to handle?” he asked without thinking about what those words might imply.

“Oh, so you swing both ways too, hm?” She raised one dangerous eyebrow. “Should I go get one for you?”

“Not… not tonight,” he stammered. “But yes. I would be interested in that. Later.”

Rosemary smirked. Or perhaps it was Madame Rose, now. She had something of Madame Rose about her, a certainty that he would follow her orders. “I’ll keep that in mind. You taking your pants off?”

He finished the task he had been in the middle of, and, after a moment of hesitation, slid out of his boxers as well. “What is next?”

“I was thinking that last tie we did on Sunday would give you a good view?”

He considered that tie, and let out a sigh of regret. “Would get crick in neck.”

“How about I truss you up to the chair again, then. Go get it out of the corner?” She pointed across the room.

By the time he turned around, the chair in hand, she had stripped out of the short trousers she had been wearing and was pulling both cardigan and shirt over her head. He came up behind her as she was fiddling with the fastening of her bra, setting the chair aside and reaching out to place a hand against her shoulder. “May I?”

She nodded and dropped her hands to her sides. Alexander let his fingers feather down her shoulder blades, traced the edge of her bra band where it cut into her, traced lower, where an abundance that had been hidden by her corset was now available for him to look at and enjoy. Pale stretch marks traced the skin of her abdomen and shoulders and arms, and he found himself bending over to nuzzle against her shoulder and press a kiss to one of them.

“You going to take that bra off?” she asked hoarsely.

“Mm.” He returned his fingers to the clasp and undid it with a little pinch, watching over her shoulder as her chest fell prey to gravity the instant the bra was undone.

She was much more human like this. As Madame Rose, in that corset and those boots, she was too much. But like this… she was human and warm and soft, and he wanted to touch her. So he did, wrapping his arms around her middle from behind, as he had in the kitchen.

She let out a soft exhale as he pressed his hips to hers, no doubt feeling his erection against her ass. “Feeling cuddly?”

“I said I would hold you tonight,” he murmured against the back of her neck as he pressed a kiss to it.

“And I said I was tying you up,” she shot back, reaching behind her to smack him lightly on the hip.

Alexander let out a little yelp and released her. He knew who he was trying to cuddle now. “Yes, Madame Rose.”

She turned the chair’s back towards the bed and ordered him to straddle it before she tied him to it, binding his ankles and calves to the rear legs of it and crossing his arms across the back before securing them in place. His cock poked out between the wooden rods of the back, still as hard as a rock. Harder, it felt like, though logic said that was impossible. Not that he had much logic left in his mind, now.

Madame Rose came around behind him and draped herself across his back for a moment to whisper in his ear. “Comfortable?”

Alexander whimpered. “Yes, Madame Rose.”

She let out a low laugh and stood up straight again, and he missed her warm weight against his body. “Good,” she said, and landed a stinging slap on his ass. “Ready to sit still and watch a show, like a good boy?”

“Yes, Madame Rose,” he said again.

She came around in front of him and shimmied out of her underwear before sitting on the edge of the bed, just a few short feet from where she had placed the chair. The curls visible between her broad thighs were just as grey as the curls on her head. And then she leaned back and splayed her legs apart, revealing the dark, pink-tinged inner lips of her cunt, shadowed by the curve of her stomach, and he found himself letting out another low whimper.

“What do you think?” she asked, running her hands up her thighs before using them to part the curls of her pubic hair further, revealing the hard little nubbin of her clitoris.

“You are beautiful,” he said, and meant it. She was all soft curves and gentle folds, her hair shining silver in the dim light of the dungeon, her smile flashing bright at his words.

“Flatterer,” she said. “But that will get you everywhere with me.”

Rosemary felt her smile stretch itself wide enough to make her cheeks hurt as Alexander seemed to stop breathing for a moment. Oh, his apparent interest in her body was extremely gratifying.

“Will it?” he asked, his voice a low, hoarse growl.

“Only if I want to go there.”

He laughed at that, his laugh a dark little chortle that sent a shiver down her spine. “Always in control.”

“Only if I want to be.” She picked the lube up off the bed beside her and squirted a little onto her fingertips. She suspected she was having better luck with natural lubrication tonight than she had the other night, but didn’t want to leave things to chance.

Alexander watched with dark eyes as she slid her fingers between her legs and caught her clit between them. His breath was coming in hard, shallow little pants, and he whimpered as she began touching herself. Rosemary let out the breath she had been holding as she waited to make sure he wasn’t going to call a halt to this and started to work away at her clit in little circles, and then remembered that she was planning to put on a show. Orgasming as quickly as possible would make this less fun for both of them.

She ran her fingers down between the inner lips of her cunt and parted them. “Want to watch me fuck myself?”

Alexander let out a ragged breath and nodded urgently. His cock was standing to attention between the vertical dowels of the chair back, just the tip poking through, purple-headed and dripping, a long, clear string of pre-cum stretching towards the floor. “Please, Madame Rose.”

Rosemary smiled and reached for the dildo… and then paused. “Or how about I do to this what I want to do to that hard cock of yours right now?”

He made a strangled noise in his throat as she licked the tip of the dildo, and thrust his hips forward as best as he was able, fighting against the bonds futilely for a moment. “Please…”

She set the dildo aside and dropped her feet to the floor in front of the bed, reaching out to grab him by the back of the neck, digging her nails in lightly. “Please?”

His gaze seemed glazed as he looked her in the eye. “Please may I masturbate as well, Madame Rose?”

She laughed and released him. She had tied his hands individually with just that thought in mind, but had no intention of allowing such things so soon. “Maybe if you’re a good boy while I get myself off,” she said, lifting herself back onto the surface of the bed. She grabbed the dildo again, and the condom, and prepared both for use. “Right now all you get to do is watch.” A little more lube, just to be safe, and then she leaned back on one hand and pressed the dildo between the lips of her cunt, letting the tip slip up between them. She let out a low hiss of breath as the tip of the dildo slid across her clit, hard and fast.

And then, a slow slide back down, and she pressed the dildo against her opening. Perhaps it was because having Alexander actually watch her as she masturbated was even more arousing than just the thought of it, or perhaps it was because she’d made sure everything was well-lubed, but the entire length of the dildo slid up inside her in one swift thrust. Rosemary let out a low, involuntary moan, a noise echoed in Alexander’s voice.

She fucked herself soft and slow with the dildo at first, pausing every few thrusts with it buried in her depths so that she could play with her clit. Alexander’s gaze was riveted on the scene between her legs once more, and every once in a while he attempted to thrust his hips forward again, clearly desperate for more relief than the brush of the bars on the chair back could provide.

“I want you to fuck me like that some day,” he said, hoarse and breathless.

“And how about you fucking me like this?” she asked, amused.

“I do not think I have that much control,” he growled. “When I am ready for you…” he trailed off into a ragged breath, and shook his head. “I will not be able to go slow.”

“How would you fuck me, then?” She pressed the dildo deep once more, circling it gently inside her cunt and letting out a little ooh of satisfaction at the feeling.

“Hard. Fast.” He gulped in air, met her eye. “Desperate.”

“Do you want to fuck me right now?”

He shook his head, and then shrugged, awkward with his arms bound to the chair. “I do not know.”

Rosemary began moving the dildo faster, harder, letting herself imagine that it was Alexander between her thighs. “Then do you want to fuck me like this, when you’re ready to?”

“Faster.”

She smiled and began moving faster still, dropping further back, from leaning on her hand to leaning on her elbow so that she had a hand free to play with a nipple. “Better?” she gasped.

The only response she got from him was a low grunt.

She kept fucking herself with the dildo, watching Alexander across the expanse of her stomach as she did, until she dropped flat on her back and he dropped out of sight. She slid her free hand down between her thighs as well, working away at her clit in the hard, fast little circles that she had started with, until with an arch of her back and a breathless shout she came hard, her cunt clenching down so hard on the dildo that it was forced halfway out of her just from the force of her orgasm.

She heard a small, distressed noise from Alexander, and lifted her head to find that at some point between when she had dropped her head to the bed and now, he had orgasmed as well, his cum dripping off the back of the chair, his face flushed dark with either arousal or embarrassment.

Rosemary pushed herself back upright and examined the mess with a smile. “Well. Aren’t you a messy boy.”

Alexander ducked his head against his shoulder, shutting his eyes. “I did not mean to…”

She placed her feet carefully on the floor, doing her best to avoid the splatters he’d left there, and reached out to grip his chin firmly, forcing him to turn his face back towards her. “Darling, I’m not angry.”

He opened his eyes and examined her cautiously through his glasses. “I lost control.”

“And I’m flattered.” She dropped a kiss on the tip of his nose, and the blush—which had started to recede—flared up again. “But you _are_ going to be in charge of getting all of this cleaned up before it dries.”

“Ah. Yes.” He gave her a dazed look, and then looked down at the bonds that secured him to the chair as if seeing them for the first time. “Perhaps untie me first?”

Rosemary laughed. “Just a moment.”

She helped him rub circulation back into his wrists and ankles once he was freed. The ropes had left indentations in his skin. Not because she’d tied them particularly tightly, she thought, but because he had been fighting against them unconsciously.

He seemed to be comfortable around her while he was naked now, which was heartening. She left him in the dungeon with a cleaning rag and orders to make things spotless while she went to the other bathroom to clean off herself and her dildo, and returned to the sight of him still completely naked, on his hands and knees as he scrubbed away at the wood floor. The sight left her lingering in the doorway, watching the taut curve of his naked ass as he sat back on his heels and frowned at the floor in front of him.

“It looks good enough from here,” she called out to him.

He looked over his shoulder at her, clearly startled. “Rosemary.”

“That’s my name.”

He smiled. “I like saying it.”

Oh, that made her blush. Made her blush, and left her completely incapable of responding beyond a stammer. “Well, I, uh…” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “Want to sleep in my bed tonight?”

His eyes opened wide. “Not in here?”

“Unless you’d rather.”

He shook his head. “I would like to sleep in your bed.”

“Take care of that rag, grab whatever you want to sleep in, and come on across the hall, then.” She left him behind and went to dig out her frumpy pajamas again, and a few minutes later he joined her, pulling his undershirt over his head as he entered her room.

“Climb on in,” she said, jerking her head towards the bed as she did up the final few buttons of the pajama top.

Alexander pulled the covers back and slid beneath the sheets, shuffling towards the side of the bed that was pressed up against a wall before settling down. It was a full-sized bed, considerably smaller than the queen in her dungeon, but she felt lonely sleeping in anything larger on her own.

With Alexander there, she thought it would feel comfortably crowded.

When she went to climb in herself, she caught him nuzzling surreptitiously at the pillow. “Something smell bad?”

He gave her a guilty look. “No. Good. It smells like you.” He held his arms open for her, and she slid into them, nestling her head beneath his chin, against his shoulder, wrapping an arm around his middle, and, when he didn’t protest, tucking her calf over his knees. He nuzzled her hair instead of the pillow, and she felt the corner of his mouth twitch into a smile. “Not as good as you smell.”

Rosemary nuzzled against his chest. He smelled good, too. Old Spice, probably—Al had used it, and the scent was familiar, though not one she usually enjoyed on people who weren’t her dead husband—but it combined with the scent of Alexander himself in a strange alchemy that left her wanting to nibble every bit of his skin.

She tilted her head back enough to give his neck an exploratory nibble, just to test this urge. Alexander let out a chuckle. “What was that?”

“Just testing something.”

“Oh?” He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and adjusted his position, nestling close against her. “Testing what?”

She pulled her head back so that she could look him in the eye. “Testing whether or not I want to nibble you all over.”

Alexander’s mouth dropped open and he let out all of his breath in a rush, warm against her face. “And?” he squeaked.

“I’m pretty sure I do,” she said, tucking her head back against his shoulder. “So let me know when I’m allowed to, all right?”

She felt him swallow hard, her cheek pressed to his throat, heard his equally rushed inhalation. “I will.” He gulped again, and then let out another chuckle. “I was not worried about you literally eating me alive, but…”

Rosemary laughed. “No cannibalism, I promise. Unless you’re into that sort of thing, I suppose.”

“I think I will settle for being nibbled all over.” He sounded remarkably intrigued by the idea.

“It’s a date,” she said with a yawn, suddenly exhausted. Alexander yawned as well, and tugged her a little closer.

Before she knew it, she was asleep.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mild angst and cunnilingus.

Alexander woke up early and easily. It was usually a struggle to wake himself up on a weekday—but then, he had usually been awake far too late the night before, doing tasks that could have waited for the next day if he was not simply wasting time on something meaningless. But he had felt no urge to pull out his phone and check his email the night before. In fact, his phone was still on the floor of Madame Rose’s dungeon, in the pocket of his trousers, and while he supposed he ought to go grab it eventually and see if any urgent email had come in overnight, it felt unnecessary to do so with any haste.

Rosemary had shifted away from him in the night; she was curled up with her back to him, mostly buried beneath the covers. The covers rose and fell in time with her whispery little snore, and he found himself watching her, feeling a strange swell of fondness.

He liked her. More than that, he wanted her, a feeling that still sat strange and foreign in his mind. What was it about this woman that had him wanting her so soon, when wanting had always taken time before?

She was attractive and aware of it, in a way that leant her confidence rather than arrogance. But so were many other people, and he did not find himself wanting them. And there was the aspect of her that was Madame Rose, that steely control and the bondage and the pain, and he certainly found her arousing like that. But arousal was not the same as this wanting, as this bone-deep fondness he felt in her presence, even when she was just Rosemary, with Madame Rose nowhere to be found.

He slid closer to her under the covers, close enough that he could wrap an arm around her middle and kiss the back of her neck. She stirred and shifted against him, and let out a little sigh and a giggle as he pressed more little kisses to her neck and the pulse point behind her ear.

“Al, honestly,” she murmured in a half-awake voice, squirming against him.

“If you must use nickname, I prefer Sasha,” he responded, planting a kiss on her cheek.

She inhaled sharply, clearly startled, and stiffened in his arms for a moment. “Oh.” And then she pulled away from him and half sat-up in the bed. “Alexander.” She shot him a look that read as distinctly mortified, even without his glasses, and then buried her face in her hands. “God, I’m sorry.”

Alexander pushed himself upright and reached cautiously for her, let out a sigh of relief when she yielded to his light tug and leaned against him. “What is wrong?”

“I thought… I thought you were Al for a moment. Albert. My husband,” she said, a muffled babble against his chest.

Alexander felt his breath seize in his throat. Oh. Oh, that had not occurred to him, that she would be thinking of her dead husband.

“Sorry,” she said again. Her voice was still muffled and she sounded on the verge of tears. “Shouldn’t have said that.”

Alexander did not know what to do or say or even how to respond, so instead he cuddled her closer and patted her back. They sat in silence while she snuffled quietly, clearly trying to get herself under control.

“I wasn’t expecting it, is all,” she finally said, her face still buried against his chest. “Maybe I should have. I haven’t… I haven’t really slept with anyone like this since he died.”

“And you miss him.” There, words that had nothing to do with Alexander’s reaction to the situation, not that he had finished sorting through his feelings on the subject.

“Not all the time.” She lifted her head from his chest and scrubbed tears off her cheeks with the sleeve of her pajamas. “I guess… we were married almost twenty years. Almost a third of my life, even if he was deployed for more of it than he wasn’t. And you get used to the shape of another person, in that time. You…” She grasped at the air, as if trying to snatch the right words from it. “You sort of fit yourselves to one another. And when you lose them…” She swallowed hard, and the tears welled up at the corners of her eyes again. “You lose a good bit of yourself too, you know?”

Alexander did not know. He was not even sure he could imagine it.

“So I think… I think maybe I wasn’t ready for this part of things yet. For the intimacy. Sex I can do, because that’s about pleasure and having fun, but this is…” She trailed off and met his eye, a little frown creasing her brow… and then suddenly she laughed. “And it’s not like I haven’t slept better than I have in ages with you in bed with me, because I have. Both last night and the time before.” She reached up and cupped his cheek, and tilted her head back to brush a swift little kiss against his lips. “But I might not have been ready for it, this early on.”

A strange thing, to think that she would have happily had sex with him after their first meeting, but sleeping in the same bed all night was an intimacy that she was still uncomfortable with. “You came to me last time.” He had not meant it as an accusation, and he winced a bit when it came out sounding like one.

Rosemary winced as well, and flinched away from him. “And it was fine last time,” she said in a small voice. “But last time wasn’t in the bed I’ve been sleeping in alone for fifteen years. I’m just warning you now that I might have a lot of feelings about this, and I don’t think they’ll be easy to sort out.” She looked down at her hands where they were folded together in her lap, one thumb running nervously over the knuckles of the other hand. “You know, in case you want to cut and run now, before you have to deal with any more of my baggage.”

Alexander still did not know what to feel about any of this, other than being left with an extremely strong impression that he had been an asshole just now and owed her an apology for it. Not that he had any idea how to apologize. “I do not want to cut and run.” He reached for her and she let him pull her back against his chest. “I do not know… Hrn.” He made a frustrated noise. “I meant this to be an apology. I did not mean to accuse you of doing something wrong when you came to me the other night. I simply wished to communicate that I do not understand.” He swallowed hard and stroked her shoulder. “And that I will try to.”

Her arms came around his chest and she hugged him so tightly that for a moment he was completely incapable of drawing in a breath. “Thank you,” she murmured. “And… I do want to keep sleeping with you. It’s nice.”

“Perhaps in my bed next time?” he offered, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. “I could cook you dinner… when? Is tonight too soon?”

Rosemary laughed. “You’re awfully hasty.”

He was. He knew it, felt his own hesitation, but he had said it anyway. “You make me want to be domestic,” he admitted. “Want to cook you better meal than last night’s.”

She pulled back to look him in the eye. “How about we sleep together Saturday night. After our date. I need a couple of days to adjust, I think. And I’ll need some time to prepare for Friday.”

Ah, yes. The session with one of her regulars that she had mentioned. A brief surge of irrational jealousy seized his throat, filled it with the taste of acid when he swallowed. “Very well. Then I will see you Saturday.”

“Shall we go eat some breakfast? When do you need to be in to work by?” Her expression was bright and a little brittle, as if she had noticed his jealousy.

What was he even worried about? He had no claim on this woman; he rather thought she was the sort of woman who would defy any claim made upon her. But some part of him still wanted to try, to give her some reason to remember him when he was not at her side. “My first class is at ten. What time is it now?”

She glanced over her shoulder at the alarm clock on her bedside table, the numbers nothing but a bright red blur to him from this distance without his glasses. “A bit after seven. Plenty of time to shower and have breakfast.”

“Not yet.” He leaned in to kiss her neck.

“Alexander?” Her voice was soft and questioning, but she did not protest as he kept pressing kisses to her neck and the little bit of shoulder that her pajamas exposed. He slid his hand up her side and cupped her breast carefully through the flannel of her pajama top.

“Alexander.” She caught him by the wrist, and he pulled back from her neck to look at her again. A little frown puckered between her eyebrows. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Want to,” he said, leaning back in to press his lips to those frown lines on her forehead. “Want to give you reason to think about me as much as I have been thinking about you.” He cupped her other breast in his free hand, slid his fingers along the heavy curve of it to find her nipple. Rosemary made a little noise in the back of her throat that put a smile on his face. He lowered his head to bury his face against her neck again, continued kissing her skin, soft and warm beneath his lips.

“Is it all right if I touch you too?” she asked breathlessly.

Alexander paused, and considered. Would it be fair to ask this of her? But if he allowed her to touch him, would she not attempt to take control away from him? “If you can bear it,” he murmured, skimming his thumb across her nipple in a way that made her gasp, “I would prefer to explore you on my own.”

Her cheek flushed hot and sudden against his. “All right,” she said, in a voice gone suddenly squeaky. “Tell me if that changes?”

“I will.” Alexander returned to what he had been doing, kissing and nibbling his way down her shoulder. He put his fingers to the buttons of her pajama top. “May I?”

He felt her nod against the side of his head, followed by a soft “Please.”

He had not had the chance to admire her properly the night before. She had become Madame Rose all too quickly, and any chance he might have had to take his time with her body had disappeared before he had realized that he wanted to. Now, though, he had all the time in the world—or at least, enough time, provided he did not allow himself to become too distracted—and he intended to explore her very slowly indeed.

Her breath hitched in her lungs as he unbuttoned one button, and then a second. She let that breath out again in a warm sigh against the side of his scalp as he slid the top off her shoulder, exposing that tracery of pale stretch marks that had so fascinated him the night before, as he kissed his way down the slope of her shoulder, as buttons three and four were loosed.

“Enjoying yourself?” she asked as he tongued one of the stretch marks, feeling the way it cut a shallow groove in her skin.

The only reply he was capable of giving her was a low hum of contentment. He was cupping one of her breasts again, bare skin to skin this time, the weight of it filling his palm and fingers and spilling beyond. He lifted it, lowering his head to take her nipple in his mouth, to flick his tongue sudden and rough across the surface in a way that made Rosemary jerk and gasp.

“All right?” he asked, lifting his head to meet her eye.

She nodded, wide-eyed. “More than. Please.”

He returned his attention to her nipple, continued playing with it, lips and tongue and teeth measuring its dimensions, testing its sensitivity. And then, when he was done, he moved on to her other nipple and did the same.

A glance down at her lap revealed her hands knotted firmly in the sheets, knuckles pale, a testament to her determination not to touch him back. A glance at her face revealed a soft, unfocused expression, lips parted and relaxed around hard, panting breaths. Alexander pressed a kiss to that soft, open mouth, caressing her lower lip with his tongue and slipping it into her mouth. She had morning breath—well, so must he—but even so, the taste of her compelled him to deepen the kiss.

This, she responded to. Her hands did not leave the sheets in her lap, but she joined him in that open-mouthed kiss with a great deal of enthusiasm and even more skill, the wicked velvet slide of her tongue along his rousing some extremely base instincts.

He broke the kiss to murmur in her ear. “May I go down on you?”

This got a breathless laugh from her. “After that demonstration of what your mouth can do? Yes, absolutely, please. As long as it’s you wanting to do it because you actually want to, and not you offering it because you think I require it.”

He pulled back to meet her eye. “I want to.”

She studied him carefully, that little frown of hers back... and then she shrugged out of her pajama top before pushing the covers back. She paused with her hand on the waistband of her pants. “You want to undress me, or...?”

He shook his head. “Go ahead. I will watch.”

She squirmed a bit, as if his words had sent a shiver down her spine, and then stripped herself efficiently out of the pants and her underwear. “It’s been a bit since my last partner and my most recent panel came back clean,” she said, a gentle babble he barely heard over his intent focus on her body as she finished undressing, “But there are dental dams in my bedside table...” she trailed off as he shook his head.

“Want me laying down, then?”

He nodded, and she lowered herself to the bed, watching him over the expanse of her chest and stomach, her knees bent and her legs parted for him.

He had no words. He put his hand to her thigh, felt the ripple of cellulite beneath his fingertips, felt the heat of her. He did not know how to accept this gift, the unselfconscious way she had laid herself bare, the way even now she was watching him anxiously, as if ready to call a halt to this the instant he showed even the slightest sign of discomfort. And her arousal, too, those pupils blown wide and dark, the breath that labored hard in her lungs, the lips that were still parted around every one of those panting breaths. She wanted him—him, of all people! But that much was clear on her face, and he did not dare ask her why.

He returned his attention to her body, to the slow exploration he had started at her shoulder and now intended to end between her legs. His cock had been standing hard and firm against his stomach since he had woken; now it twitched in anticipation as he let his fingers trail up her thigh to where they could part the silvered curls that covered her cunt, as he lowered his face to the curve of her stomach to taste another stretch mark and then another, fascinated by their texture beneath his tongue and the warmth of Rosemary’s skin.

The inner lips of her cunt were hot and slick, and he slid his fingers down between them, testing her entrance with a fingertip before lifting his hand to his lips so he could lick the taste of her from it. He watched her as he did, watched those lust-dark eyes darken further before snapping shut as if she could not bear the anticipation, watched her reach deliberately up to grab on to two handfuls of pillow on either side of her head.

“Alexander, I have been very good, but if you do not get your face down between my legs right now, I _swear_—“

As she spoke, he tugged her legs further apart and slid over to crouch down between them, cutting off her frustrated rant by doing just as she asked.

Rosemary felt all of her remaining breath leave her lungs in a rush as Alexander’s tongue found her clitoris. He was cautious at first, unlike the rough way he had approached her nipples, but that caution soon yielded to confidence as she made very sure he was aware that she was enjoying what he was doing.

She felt a little guilty about it, all the same.

That guilt was blanked out of her mind completely when his fingers joined his tongue, a pair of them slipping up inside her. “There’s a spot in there up near the top—ooh!” Never mind.

He’d found it on his own.

An orgasm followed swiftly after, sending a jolt up her spine and tensing her limbs, a sparkling ecstasy she let herself sink into. He kept his mouth on her through it, kept his fingers deep inside her, eking a second and then a third set of spasms out of her, until finally she released the pillow from numb fingers and reached down to place her hand on the top of his head and whisper a hoarse “Too much.”

He lifted his head slowly, as if reluctant to leave the taste of her behind, and licked her off his fingers in a way that left her wanting to watch this man suck a cock.

“Bit of an oral fixation there, hm?”

He simply let out one of those low hums he used sometimes in place of a more verbal response—an affectation she both adored and which sent a shiver down her spine—and sat back onto his heels. His cock was still tenting the front of his boxers, which had a large damp patch spread across the front.

“Can I help you do something about that?”

He looked down at his cock as if its continued tumescence was a surprise to him, and then squinted in the direction of her alarm clock. “What time is it?”

Rosemary turned her head to look as well. “Almost nine.” She hadn’t realized it had been so long; she had been too caught up in Alexander’s exploration of her body to be paying any attention to the time.

When she turned her attention back to Alexander, he was shaking his head. “I will masturbate and then take my shower.”

“Could I watch?”

He looked, for just a moment, as if he were about to agree, and then shook his head ruefully. “Will be tempted to put on show we do not have time for if you do.”

“I’ll drive you in to work. That’ll get us a good ten minutes more.”

He raised an eyebrow, a little smile just turning up the corners of his mouth. “Terrible woman. Yes it would, but I want time to cook you breakfast again.”

That simple offer, plainly stated, pierced her to her core. Though after what he’d said about her making him want to be domestic... “Fine. Go take your shower and get yourself off.”

He lifted himself over her for a moment, the hard length of his cock pressing into her stomach as he bent down to brush a brief kiss against her mouth that tasted of her. And then he clambered awkwardly over her other leg, claimed his glasses from her bedside table, and was gone, no doubt heading for the dungeon’s bathroom. Rosemary folded her hands over her stomach and stared at the ceiling, trying to sort her feelings out.

Well. _Well_. That had certainly been something. And it wasn’t the orgasm that had her feeling like this, though that was part of it. But Alexander…

He had been very intent, that was all. She’d gotten used to taking her pleasure where she could get it over the years since Al had died, from fuckbuddies and one night stands alike. Interactions which had, for the most part, been impersonal, just sex for the sake of getting off. But with Alexander... with Alexander, for the first time in years, it felt like it meant something again. Like it was about being touched by this person in particular, like even if the sex was bad or silly or awkward it wouldn’t matter because it was with him. Like her passing thought from the other day, that she could really love this man some day, wasn’t so passing.

Her stomach went all fluttery at the thought, and she started smiling and couldn’t stop. Oh, she liked him. So much.

And she needed to get herself ready for the day, not spend all the rest of her morning laying around in bed, giddy as a schoolgirl with her first crush. She rolled herself onto her side and pushed herself upright, laughing a little at how shaky she seemed to be. He’d really done a number on her, hadn’t he.

By the time she joined Alexander in the kitchen, he had plated a meal of cheesy scrambled eggs and toast and some of the little tomatoes she’d bought last week because they were a mix of bright colors and then had brought home and found she had no idea of what to do with them. Slice them in half, salt them lightly and serve them with eggs, apparently.

Alexander seemed withdrawn, poking at the meal he’d prepared in a desultory manner and answering her questions about his day ahead of him in monosyllables. Finally, Rosemary put her fork down on the side of her plate and reached across the table to take Alexander’s hands in hers.

“What’s wrong?”

He looked up at her, obviously startled. “Nothing.”

“And that’s one syllable more than you’ve answered any of my other questions with. Are you regretting this morning?”

He flushed and shook his head.

“Are you sure? I was worried it might be too much, too soon for you.”

“It was not. That is what is bothering me.” He seemed... not anxious, but distressed in a different way.

“I have a question for you, and maybe this is going to sound a little weird, but... have you ever gotten turned on when you were having a conversation that stimulated you intellectually?”

The blush on his cheeks deepened and spread to his scalp and ears. “Had to train myself out of it in grad school. No one in my program wanted to date me, and getting an erection at conferences was mortifying.”

“Oh, you poor darling.” Rosemary tried not to be too amused by the thought. “And you said that you’ve mostly dated people who haven’t been really interested in what you do?”

He nodded, and freed his hand from hers in order to poke at his eggs again. “I let people come to me. Not that there have been many. But it was easier than taking the time to see if I could even be interested in them that way.”

“I see.” Rosemary picked her own fork up again, but kept her right hand clasped gently over his left. “So what you’re telling me is that this might be the first time in your adult life where you’ve done the choosing or have chosen who is genuinely interested in what you do.”

He dropped his fork back to his plate with a clatter and stared at her wide-eyed as she speared one of the little tomato halves on her plate and ate it. “I... had not thought of it in those terms,” he said in a faint, shocked voice. “I thought it was just the bondage...”

“And I’m sure the bondage helps.” Rosemary squeezed his hand. “But I don’t think it’s everything, is all.” She jerked her chin in the direction of his plate. “You should eat up. Quickly. You’ve got about five minutes before we need to get out of here.”

He dove into the rest of the meal with a great deal more enthusiasm, and her attempts at a conversation on the short car ride in to GIT’s campus were met with significantly more of his attention. “You were right,” he said, leaning over to kiss her briefly as she pulled over in front of the building his class was in to let him out. “It is very good to be with someone I can have conversation with.”

“See you Saturday,” she responded, tugging him back towards her until he dropped another peck on her lips, his mouth curving into a smile against hers as he did. “And I’ll be thinking about you. All the time.”

He blushed. “Dreadful woman. I have to go teach a class right now, you know.”

“And I’m sure you’ll be ready to when you get there, but let me tease my fellow a bit, hm?”

His pleased expression when she called him her fellow made those butterflies in her stomach start jumping around again, but all he did was lean back in and give her one more peck on the cheek before sliding out the door of her car. “See you Saturday,” he said as he bent over to gather up his backpack and messenger bag.

And then he was gone.

Rosemary had truly only meant those words to tease Alexander. As much as she liked him, she hadn’t truly expected to be thinking about him all the time.

Expectations be damned. Even when she was trying to concentrate on other work, the man kept slipping in through the cracks. She spent her morning attempting to finish up the audio she was transcribing and failing utterly to concentrate on it for more than five minutes at a time, though eventually she muddled her way through to a clean transcript and sent it off to her client. And then she spent her afternoon after that lounging on the couch with a pot of tea and a couple of pharmacology journals she had been meaning to read through for a while, all the while wishing that Alexander were right next to her, where she could ask him his opinions in real time instead of adding her comments to their ever-growing email and text chains on every subject under the sun.

And then, Friday evening, with her regular… well, she couldn’t get her head in the game at all.

“Sorry, darling. I’ll send you a refund,” she said at the end of the session, once they were both cleaned up and dressed once more, sitting in her living room with the usual tea tray she offered her clients at the end of a session.

Marcus frowned at her, and set his teacup and saucer down so that he could put a hand to her arm. “Oh, no need. I’m just worried. This isn’t like you in the _slightest_, my dear.”

Rosemary suppressed the shudder that Marcus’s false sympathy sent through her. Truth be told, he wouldn’t be too much of a loss; she always forgot between sessions how slimy the man could be. “I’m getting a bit old for this line of work, I think,” was all she said, shrugging his hand off her arm.

“If you say so.”

She managed to shuffle him out of her house a short time after with the excuse that she had some more work to get done that night, but his words nagged at her. Fine, maybe she was a little too attached to Alexander for this early on. But was it really such a bad thing?

She couldn’t answer that. Couldn’t figure out how to at all. Because Alexander had made her realize how lonely she really was these days, and the thought of losing him made her panic, just a little.

Her phone buzzed, and she picked it up. A text from Alexander.

**Hope your session went well. **

For some reason, tears were suddenly pricking at the corners of her eyes.

**Could I call you?** she texted back.

Her phone rang an instant later. “Is something wrong?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice.” And her own voice was cracking a bit, as the tears threatened to encroach further.

He made a soft little noise that wasn’t a word. “Do you want to come over?”

The question was offered cautiously, hopefully, and it made the tears she’d been holding back start streaming down her face. “Would that be all right?” She did her best to keep the sound of her crying out of her voice and failed entirely.

“Bring your terrible pajamas. I will hold you,” he said firmly, almost like an order.

“I’ll be there in ten.” But she stayed on the phone, listening to Alexander breathe, for a few moments longer. “Thank you,” she managed to squeak out.

“Come quickly,” was his only response.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Facesitting, banging, and bondage.

Alexander left his apartment to wait by the front door of the complex, and followed Rosemary’s little red Bug to the visitor spaces when it arrived. She rolled down her window to look up at him curiously when he fetched up next to her car.

“A parking pass,” he said, offering her the paper. “The tow company can be a bit… ah, overzealous, when it comes to overnight visitors.”

She raised her eyebrows as she scanned the paper. “Good to know,” she said, before rolling up her window and sticking the pass on her dashboard.

Alexander stepped back to give her space to get out of the car, but worry kept him close. She seemed fine now, but he would have sworn that she had been crying when she had called him.

“I’m fine,” was the first thing she said when she straightened up from pulling a shoulder bag out of her passenger seat. She shut the door and locked her car and turned to Alexander, a cautious, challenging set to her face.

“I never said you were not,” he responded mildly.

Her lower lip trembled. “Good. Just as long as we’re clear on that.” She brushed past him and set out for the front door of the apartment complex, and Alexander trailed along in her wake, bemused.

She did not say anything as they walked up the stairs to his apartment, did not say anything as he unlocked his apartment to let them both in, did not say anything even once they were both through the door and he was doing up the deadbolt behind them. And then he turned to her, and suddenly her arms were around his chest and she was burying her face against his shoulder.

“Is this all right?” she asked, her voice muffled in his shirt front.

“Yes.” Alexander wrapped his arms around her and rested his cheek against the top of her head. “What is wrong?”

She let out a snuffly laugh, as if she had started crying again and had just stopped. “The fact that I feel better now.”

Alexander really had no idea what to say to that. “But you _do_ feel better?”

She nodded, her short curls brushing his cheek. “And it’s ridiculous.”

He pressed a kiss to the side of her head. “Why is it ridiculous?”

“Because.” Rosemary lifted her head to frown up at him. “Because I’ve known you for less than a month and I’m thinking about you all the time, and don’t give me that look, it’s not just because I’m hot for you.” Alexander tried to smooth his amused expression away, but her eyes still darted away from his, like she could not bear to look directly at him. “I want to… to talk to you. All the time. About your day, or about whatever I’m reading at the moment, or…” She trailed off with a sigh and leaned her cheek to his chest. “It’s just too much, too fast, is all.”

Alexander sighed as well. “I know.” But he continued to cuddle her close, his chin resting against her forehead. “But I do not want to stop seeing you, all the same.”

“Well,” she said emphatically. “At least it’s not just me.”

Alexander laughed. “I was already out of comfort zone. This is all new for me.”

She pulled back to meet his eye, and he released her so that she could. “But you still want to keep seeing me.”

He nodded and reached up to cup her cheek, leaning down to brush a kiss against the tip of her nose. “I am not so old I cannot learn some new tricks.”

Rosemary blushed at his teasing, her cheek heating beneath his hand. “Horrible man. Getting back at me for that comment about being an old bitch, hm?”

“Mm-hm.” He tilted her head back a bit further with a gentle nudge of his hand. “Kisses?”

She laughed and lifted herself onto her toes, bringing her mouth to his, sliding her arms up around his shoulders to hold herself steady. Alexander wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close against him as he kissed her again and again, as she kissed him back, as it transformed from a give and take into something they were doing together. It felt good—no, better than good, because this was Rosemary, and because she had just confessed to thinking about him all the time, and because she was here in his apartment just because she had wanted to see him.

“You might still find out something about me that makes you hate me in a couple of months, you know,” she said when they broke the kiss to catch their breath.

“More likely you will gain a disgust of me.” Alexander leaned back in to brush his lips against hers again. “I understand I am not an easy man to be in a relationship with.”

She shivered from the brief contact, then smiled. “I’m up for a challenge.”

“Good.” And then they were kissing again. Rosemary backed him up to the wall next to the door, pinning him in place with her weight, and Alexander found himself breathless and desperate at the feeling of her body against his. “Rosemary?” he asked when they next broke apart.

She lifted her lips from his throat, where they had gone by some instinct that he very much appreciated as she nibbled softly at his neck. “What is it?”

“I think I might be ready.”

“Ready?” The word was soft and confused, and murmured between further nibbles.

“Sex. I would like to have sex with you.”

She let out a startled breath and pulled back to study him with a frown. “You’re sure?”

He already missed her weight against him. “I want you on top of me quite desperately.”

Her eyes widened. “Condoms? Lube?”

“Both in my bedroom.”

“And you’re sure.”

Alexander did not know how to say it in a way that would get across how certain he suddenly was, so he simply nodded fervently at her. “As long as you are.”

Rosemary swallowed hard and offered up a nod of her own. “Where’s your bedroom?”

She laughed when she saw his bed, and she might as well; sometime over the past week and a half, the nebulous thought that he might some day want to have Rosemary—or rather, Madame Rose—tie him to his own bed had occurred to him, and he had impulse-purchased a set of cuffs and had attached them to the corners of the bed frame once they arrived. She bent over and picked one up from where it was dangling close to the floor, rubbing her thumb over the leather, something subtle about her body language changing as she did. “These are nice. Want to use them for this?”

The thought left him dry-mouthed and stammering. “I, uh.”

Madame Rose eyed him. “That’s not a no.”

“Not tonight,” he managed. “Am not certain I am ready to have sex with Madame Rose yet.”

She laughed and dropped the cuff and was Rosemary once more. “Fair enough.” Rosemary stepped in close to him and put her hands to the front of his shirt. “All right if I undress you?”

“Faster if we undress ourselves,” he said, placing his hands over hers.

“But less fun.” She raised a challenging eyebrow, and he released her hands.

Rosemary unbuttoned his shirt slowly, her fingers lingering against his body, warm even through the layers that he wore at this time of the year. She slid her hands up the front of his short-sleeved undershirt when she was done, into the shoulders of his overshirt, trailing her hands down the bare skin of his arms to help him free his wrists as he shrugged out of the it, leaving it dangling from where it was still tucked into his trousers.

She was very close, and very intent, her hands going to his belt and the button of his trousers next, tugging the cloth of both shirts gently free. “Take this off for me?” she asked, tugging lightly at the front of his undershirt.

Alexander backed up a step and pulled it hastily over his head, and then Rosemary was close again, her fingers trailing down the pale skin of his chest to his waist. She had him remove his shoes before she finished with his trousers, and seemed to be just as fascinated by his body as he had been by hers, though he could not imagine why. But she seemed to be incapable of not touching him, her fingers trailing across skin as she bared it to the cool air of his bedroom, her eyes intent on those points of contact.

He did not think she meant it as a seduction, but he felt it as one anyway. Not that she needed to seduce him further. He was already intoxicated by her, body and mind alike.

She removed his boxers, bent to slide them down his legs. And then he was naked in front of her, and she was still bent over and eyeing his hard cock in a way that spoke of a certain avarice. “Can I suck your cock?” she asked, the blunt words said in a tone that was almost reverent.

“Not tonight,” he panted, but oh, his mind was filled with the image of her on her knees between his legs, and he definitely wanted to see it some day soon. Possibly while she had him tied to a chair. “Stand up. My turn.”

Rosemary laughed and stood and shivered under his touch as he undressed her, as he removed her cardigan and the soft cotton shirt she was wearing beneath it that clung to the curves and folds of her body, as he stepped in close to slide his hands around her and fiddle with the catch of her bra, as he knelt to slide her stretchy pants and underwear down her legs in one smooth movement. He nuzzled her stomach when it was bared, pressed a kiss to the upper curve of it.

Rosemary stepped out of her pants and put her hands over his, where he was clinging to her hips. “The condoms?”

Alexander had caught the scent of her now, warm and salty and musky, and nuzzled further down her stomach. “Just a moment.”

“If I can’t go down on you tonight, it seems dreadfully unfair that you be allowed to go down on me,” she said conversationally, a smile in her voice.

“You can orgasm more than once,” he growled against her before pressing a kiss to a spot just above her pubic hair. “And I am going to be very quick.”

“Fair point,” she said, sounding a little short of breath. “But let’s at least get in bed first. Condoms?”

“Condoms are in top drawer of bedside table.” She stepped back from him and fished the condoms and a small bottle of lube out of the drawer before clambering onto the bed. Alexander got to his feet and followed her.

“You said you wanted me on top of you. I’m going to assume I’m reading cues right and you _do_ want me to sit on your face right now?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with amusement.

He had not been trying to give her any cues, but now that she was offering he wanted it desperately. “_Please_.”

It took more than a little bit of awkward adjustment, but a few minutes later they managed it, her knees hooked around his shoulders and arms and his face buried between the lips of her cunt. Despite her warmth and obvious arousal—the nubbin of her clitoris was peeking out from under its hood, and just as sensitive to the touch of his tongue as it had been the other morning—only the barest hit of wetness was gathered between her thighs.

He tilted his head back to look up at her. “You are certain about this?”

“Something wrong?”

“It is just, ah… the other morning, you were already very… ready. When I got down here.”

Rosemary let out a snort of laughter. “Menopause, darling. It’s had an impact.” She released one of her hands from where she was gripping the headboard of the bed to balance herself and reached down to stroke light fingers across his scalp. “If I’m not enjoying myself, I’ll let you know.”

Alexander buried his face in her cunt once more and wrapped his arms firmly around her thighs to hold her steady. Now, if he could just remember what he had done the other morning, that had her reacting so positively…

Fortunately, Rosemary was responsive and very clear about what she enjoyed. He followed the prompting of the little gasps and murmurs of appreciation she let out, increased the pace when she leaned her forehead against the headboard and gasped a frantic “Faster,” down at him. He was rewarded with a rush of wetness against his chin, with Rosemary’s intense control over her own body giving way as she ground down against his mouth mindlessly, with a strangled noise in the back of her throat as her entire body tensed for a moment and then relaxed before she slumped further forward against the headboard.

“Just a moment,” she panted. “Oh.”

“Take your time,” he said, freeing his mouth to speak, though the thought of waiting an instant longer for her... well, if she was not quick, he would have to take matters into his own hands, that was all. Not that he thought he could easily shift her weight to where he wanted her without cooperation from the woman herself.

Fortunately, he did not have to wait long. She carefully unhooked her legs from around his shoulders after a moment and slid down his body, settling her hips firmly over his, his cock nestled between the slick lips of her cunt. He thrust against her, caught against her opening, slid inside her in one smooth movement that left him gasping.

Oh, she felt so good around him. Hot and slick and very, very tight in the aftermath of her orgasm.

Her eyes opened wide. “Condom.”

“Right.”

She had set the condoms next to the headboard, along with the lube that was clearly unneeded. Alexander fumbled for a condom as she slid off him, and her thighs trembled to hold her upright enough to give him the space he needed to roll the condom on. And then she reached down and took his cock in her hand and held him steady as she lowered herself on his length again, letting out a little whimper as she enveloped him entirely.

“God, you’re hard,” she whispered, and then, with a little laugh, added “Always forget it’s different than fucking myself with a dildo.”

Alexander was beyond words. He reached up to tug at her waist, and with another little laugh she fell forward over him, her stomach and breasts heavy against him as he seized her hips and thrust frantically up inside her, again and again. Her lips pressed to his chest and then found a nipple, sending a sharp little jolt through him as she bit down on it roughly.

That was enough to take him over the edge, as tightly wound as he had been. His orgasm rendered him insensible to the world, but Rosemary’s weight grounded him, kept him safe through the aftershocks that left him still moving unconsciously against her.

Rosemary lifted her head from his chest and pressed a warm kiss to his jawline. “You were right. That was obscenely quick.”

Alexander let out a snort of laughter and slid his hand between them to hold onto the condom. “You should dismount. About to lose structural integrity.”

Rosemary laughed as well and slid off of him, nestling in at his side. “You seem to be in a good mood.”

Alexander nodded and turned his head to press a kiss to her forehead. “Thank you.”

She gave him a strange look. “For what?”

He did not know how to put words to it. He did not even know if there words for what he wanted to say. “For wanting me for me,” he said finally, not able to think of anything better.

Rosemary looked as if she were about to cry for a moment. “You should have never accepted anything else from a partner,” she said, her voice rough. She reached up and cupped his cheek tenderly in her palm. “No one ever should.”

Perhaps not, but a certain desperation to feel normal had lead him to do so again and again as a younger man. Had lead to him clinging to any person who showed the slightest sign of being interested in him—or who even seemed interested in just using him—never mind the fact that he had not been attracted beyond a certain aesthetic appreciation to most of them. But rather than voice this realization to Rosemary, he pressed a kiss to her lips and then pushed himself half upright. “I should go clean up.”

She nodded. “I’ll go grab my pajamas.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were both cleaned up and had used the bathroom. Rosemary had brought a toothbrush with her—and good thing, Alexander realized, because he did not have a spare—and looked remarkably cozy in those pajamas of hers, all round and covered in flannel. A sudden exhaustion hit him hard as he clambered into bed with her, and he barely had the time to cuddle up against her side before he was out like a light.

Rosemary woke to the sound of Alexander’s snore right beneath her ear, where his head was still tucked warmly against her shoulder. She hadn’t known what to expect when Alexander had asked her if she wanted to come over the night before, but it certainly hadn’t been what had happened.

She would do her best not to expect it again. Not that she wouldn’t happily take whatever he offered, but his comment about being ready for her but not for Madame Rose had her cautious. She could so easily slip into the persona she wore as Madame Rose and push him beyond what he was comfortable with, and while she suspected he would have no complaints while it was happening, she suspected just as strongly that he would be left with regrets afterwards.

She turned her head to one side and brushed a kiss to Alexander’s forehead. He was wearing his own set of frumpy flannel pajamas and looked absolutely delicious in them. He was so put-together in his usual clothing, in his button-up shirts and his carefully-ironed slacks, and even when naked there was a certain square-shouldered dignity to him, but these pajamas were soft and rumpled up around his shoulders in a way that made him easier to approach, somehow.

The snoring came to a stuttering halt and he yawned before nuzzling closer against her neck. Rosemary tilted her head away from him to give him better access, and he responded, pressing one kiss and then another to her, a full dozen lazy, warm kisses against her neck and jaw that left her smiling.

“Good morning,” his voice murmured sleepily against her ear. And then he moved on to nibbling her earlobe.

She wasn’t going to let herself expect more than this, but damn he was making her squirm. “Good morning.”

He lifted his head from her shoulder to meet her eye. “Any regrets?”

Rosemary laughed. “That’s what I was going to ask you.”

His face was soft and unguarded as he studied her. “None,” he said, before dropping a gentle kiss on her mouth.

“I’m feeling a little out of control,” she admitted when his mouth moved on to her cheek.

He froze. “What can I do to help?”

_Nothing_, she wanted to say. Because this feeling was all in her head, wasn’t it?

But he was offering...

“Can I tie you up for a bit?”

She felt his face flush warm where it was pressed close to hers. “Absolutely.” He swallowed hard. “The cuffs are not the only purchase I made. If you are interested in more.”

Rosemary laughed. “Oh, naughty boy. Tell me, then. What else did you pick up?”

His breath was hot and panting against her cheek, and from the feel of the hard bar pressed against her thigh, what had been slowly deflating morning wood had turned into an erection in earnest. “A flog. And something... hm. I think it is similar to a riding crop?”

“Show me.”

He scrambled hastily out of the bed and returned with both items, laying them beside her almost like an offering as she sat up and leaned back against the headboard of his bed. Rosemary picked the flogger up first—a fairly standard exemplar of its type, thin leather strips attached to a sturdy handle—and gave it a contemplative swing. And then she picked up the riding crop and did the same. Quality tools, both of them, same as the cuffs he’d bought. Damn, but it must be nice to just purchase nice things like this without a thought for the cost.

She supposed she had been just another nice thing he had purchased, for the two sessions they had had together so far.

Better not think about that.

Alexander had been watching her with wide eyes, and he seemed to shiver as she sent the riding crop swishing through the air again, bringing it down on her own palm in a stinging slap that centered her. “You should get a towel. Don’t want to mess up your sheets, do you?”

“Right. Yes.” And he scrambled off the bed again, heading towards the bathroom and giving Rosemary a moment to catch her breath. She slid out of the bed herself and began making it mindlessly, smoothing out sheets and blankets so that Alexander could lay on top when he got back. He appeared at her elbow when she was smoothing the top blanket down and offered up the towel.

“You all right with being tied up face down?”

He nodded.

“Is there anything you need before I tie you up?”

He shook his head. “I took care of, ah, physical needs. While in bathroom.” And his cock had definitely deflated from the jaunty angle it had been at when he had gone dashing for the bathroom, which probably meant he’d taken the time to pee, at least.

Rosemary held her hand out for the towel and he gave it to her with a shaking hand. “Get undressed.”

She turned her back to him as she spread the towel out in the center of the bed, turned back to find him naked and still shaking.

“Hey. Hey.” She reached for him, a careful hand on his upper arm. “You all right with this?”

The corner of Alexander’s mouth quirked up in a little smile, and he leaned into her touch. “Yes. I am just… excited. Anticipating.”

“Lay down on the bed, then.”

He did as she said, and she buckled the cuffs onto his wrists and ankles before adjusting them to the appropriate level of tension. He’d done a good job of eyeballing it when he’d attached the cuffs to his bed. No illusions about his height, this man.

“I’m going to start with the flogger,” she said in a low, smooth voice, picking it up from the bedside table, where she’d set both instruments as she made the bed. She settled herself on the edge of the bed, between his left arm and leg.

“Thank you, Madame Rose.” Alexander’s voice was strangled and he turned his head to one side to look at her. He hadn’t put his glasses on this morning, and looked strangely vulnerable without them.

“You tell me if it’s too much, all right?”

He nodded at her, wide-eyed, and then squeezed his eyes shut and let out a harsh breath as the flogger came down hard on his ass.

“All right?” she asked.

“Yesssss,” he responded in a low hiss.

Rosemary trailed the thin leather strips of the flogger over his ass, and he let out a little whimper. “Want more?”

“Please, Madame Rose.”

She smirked and brought it down a second time, a harsh little smack that hit his lower back this time, and then trailed it up between his shoulder blades.

“You must be trying to drive me insane,” Alexander muttered to himself, turning his face to the surface of the bed.

“That’s not how you talk to your domme, darling,” Rosemary said, punctuating the sentence with another swift hit with the flogger. Alexander let out a startled yelp, his limbs trying to curl in on themselves instinctively but held firmly in place by the cuffs.

“Then perhaps you should punish me further for being a naughty sub,” he said, his voice muffled by the blankets beneath his face. He sounded as if he was not quite certain of the words—as if he were only acting out what he thought he was meant to say in this scenario—but Rosemary took him at his word.

She lowered her torso over his, reaching across his body to steady herself as she bent close and whispered in his ear. “Let’s see how sore we can make your backside this time, hm?”

He let out a soft noise that sounded like a curse in a language she did not know. “How you can be so dangerous even in those pajamas,” he added, turning his head towards her again, his breath hot against her face in their current position.

“Should I take them off?” It hadn’t occurred to her that he might be bothered by even this small blending of Rosemary and Madame Rose, but now that she was thinking about it, why wouldn’t he be?

He studied her face closely, and she wondered if he was reading her current train of thought from it. “Only if you wish to.”

She wasn’t sure what she wished. But she suspected he would want to keep the division between Rosemary and Madame Rose firm for now, and that would be easier to do if she wasn’t in these pajamas. She pushed herself upright and slid off the bed, standing within Alexander’s line of sight as she worked her slow way down the buttons of her pajama top. She wasn’t sure how well he could see her from his current vantage point—he had to peer awkwardly over his arm, and without his glasses she probably wasn’t much more than a dark blur anyway—but he still watched her the entire time she undressed, his breath coming in shallow, swift pants.

His very vulnerability left her wanting to possess him. A troubling thought, but there it was. She clambered on to the bed at his side again and bent over him once more... and then bit down hard on the back of his neck.

Alexander seemed to stop breathing for a moment, only to let out a breathless little moan when she released him and swiped her tongue across one of the red marks her teeth had left in the scruff of his neck.

“All right?”

“Again,” he urged.

She gathered up a small fold of skin on the back of his neck in a little nip that made him gasp, then sat back and studied her handiwork. Oh, what she had just done would definitely leave a mark against his pale skin. She wanted to ring his throat with little red marks like that, a sign to other people that he was hers.

And where that thought had come from, she had no idea.

“I’m going to flog you again,” she murmured against his ear.

This man’s unguarded reactions were a delight. The little hitch in his breath her words caused, followed by a softly whispered “Please, Madame Rose,” and the hot flush of his skin, either from arousal or embarrassment at asking for his needs to be met.

So she met those needs, one stroke of the flogger at a time, until his back and ass were rosy with it. And then she set the flogger aside and touched him, trailing fingers across the newly sensitized and reddened skin, slow and deliberate as she soothed him back down from where he had gone. Finally, his breathing settled into an almost normal pace, and he shook his head slightly as if trying to clear it.

“Thank you, Madame Rose,” he whispered.

Rosemary traced a finger down his spine and brought it to a halt just above the curve of his ass, teasing that sensitive spot in a little circle that made Alexander whimper. “Did you come?”

He shook his head. “No, Madame Rose.”

She slid her hand down to cup his ass. He didn’t have much there, but what he did have curved beautifully beneath her hand. “Do you want me to help you come?”

Alexander let out a ragged breath, and then there was silence, no doubt as he considered. “Only as Rosemary,” he said quietly. “Otherwise I would prefer to take myself in hand.”

It was her turn to consider, and to be honest, she had gotten more than a little turned on by his utter surrender. “You can watch Madame Rose masturbate before you get to, or you can make sure to meet Rosemary’s needs too,” she offered. And this felt like losing control once more, but if she talked about it like it was happening to someone else, perhaps that wouldn’t matter.

There was another ragged outrush of breath from Alexander. “Let me meet you halfway.”

“Halfway?”

“I want your thighs up around my shoulders again. You do not have to untie me for that.” And his voice was a low, amused growl that sent a shiver down her spine.

Rosemary eyed the distance between Alexander’s head and the headboard. “I think you’ll need a little maneuverability for that.”

“Then give me it.” He turned his head and lifted it as far as he could, looking over his shoulder at her. “As long as you still feel like you are in control.”

Oh, he was better than she deserved. “All right.”

She freed his ankles from their cuffs and lengthened the bonds that held his wrists steady before sliding into the space this left between him and the headboard, a pillow at her back to help her achieve the correct angle. When she settled into place, he had almost no choice but to bury his mouth in her cunt, a lack of choice he took to with a great deal of enthusiasm. Alexander had learned an awful lot about what made her squirm over their past few encounters, and he put that fresh knowledge to work, his tongue and lips and the careful nip of his teeth sending her catapulting into an orgasm that left her breathless and gasping in what she thought was probably less time than she would have taken with the most superior of her vibrators.

Not that she hadn’t already been worked up, but this was ridiculous.

And he kept her riding that peak for a second spasm and then a third, seemingly perfectly content to see to her needs before his own for as long as she wanted him to. Rosemary had to press gently at the top of his head to get him to stop, her voice too far gone from strangled screams to put words to her request. He held himself awkwardly as she fumbled the buckles of his wrist cuffs with fingers that didn’t quite remember how to work any more.

One she freed him he sat back onto his heels, rubbing his wrists. He had jerked against the bonds several times while eating her out, as if desperate to get his hands on her, but now that he had the chance, he was not taking it.

His cock was still hard. Hard, and dripping so much the entire head of it was wet and glistening, and damn she wanted it in her.

His mouth was wet too, and she reached out and grabbed him by the back of the neck, tugging him close. “Kisses?” she managed to rasp hoarsely.

Alexander smiled, and then his mouth was on hers, salty with the taste of her cunt. He teased her lips apart with his tongue, kissed her just as hot and deep as he’d been kissing her cunt and leaving her almost as lightheaded as that other kiss had. The hard bar of his erection pressed against her stomach, and she felt him thrust gently against her for a moment until he drew back, gasping for breath. “May I?” he breathed, sounding desperate.

Rosemary nodded, and he scrambled for the drawer of his bedside table and a condom, tearing the foil packet open with his teeth and rolling the condom on in a hasty one-handed thrust as his other hand helped her reposition her hips.

He sank into her just as smooth as a hot knife into butter, one deep thrust that went straight to the core of her and left her ready to beg for more. But instead of moving straight away, he clung close, his breathing harsh and his muscles tense as he attempted to wrest some level of control over his body. Finally his head fell to her shoulder with a groan. “Going to be quick again.”

“That’s fine,” she reassured him, pressing a kiss to the side of his head. “I don’t have enough energy left for you to make a big production of it.”

He let out a little laugh and pressed a kiss to her throat. “Your poor voice,” he murmured. And then one hand slid around her lower back and another cupped the back of her neck and he fucked her hard and fast against the headboard of his bed. Rosemary was helpless to do anything but cling to him as he did, desperate in her knowledge that she really had lost control entirely to this man… and that he would yield it to her whenever she needed him to.

And right now? That was everything.


End file.
